OPINION:National parties will be taking keen interest in the county and city council election results, writes NOEL WHELAN
IF ONE discounts Sundays and bank holidays, there are just 36 days of campaigning left before the local and European elections on June 5th. There was a working assumption in political and media circles that the two byelections necessary to fill Dáil vacancies in Dublin South and Dublin Central would be held on the same day, although some doubt was cast on that this week.
The European election contest is hotting up with candidates already spending large sums of money on commercial postering and advertising in local newspapers, although the shock decision of sitting MEP in North and West Seán Ó Neachtáin to retire has thrown a spanner in Fianna Fáil’s works.
It is the local elections which are most worthy of consideration at this stage, but it is important to appreciate that the local elections actually happen on two tiers.
At the lowest level of local government there are borough and town councils. The small size of the electorate in each town and the localised, and often personalised, nature of the contest, makes it difficult for anyone at national level to assess these contests, or to seek to draw any macro national political trends from them. Those wanting to understand what is happening in the town or borough council elections are better turning to local media sources.
It is the next tier of local government – the 28 county councils and five city councils – that is the most significant, and an attempt to assess the electoral terrain is possible. The 28 counties include three counties in Dublin – Fingal, Dublin South and Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown – and two in Tipperary. The five cities are Dublin, Cork, Galway, Limerick and Waterford. The contest for council seats will take place in 176 different local electoral areas, each of which will elect between three and seven councillors.
There has been a large-scale redraw of electoral areas since the last local elections in 2004, the most significant impact of which has been a dramatic reduction in the number of three seaters. There were 32 of these in 2004, while there are only five now. Larger parties generally do better in smaller electoral areas so these changes should, in theory at least, assist smaller parties and Independents.
However, given the dramatic shifts reflected in recent opinion polling, the impact, if any, flowing from area redraws will be more than swamped by other factors.
In all, there are 883 seats available in city and county councils, but only 130 of these are in areas covered by the four Dublin county councils. This means, for example, that if, as is likely, Fianna Fáil’s vote fell more sharply in Dublin than the rest of the country, the fall in seat numbers measured nationally would not be as dramatic because although Dublin has about 28 per cent of the population and about a quarter of the electors, it elects only 15 per cent of the county and city councillors.
In 2004, 1,963 candidates stood in the elections for this tier of local government. Interestingly, only 18 per cent of these candidates were female and of the councillors elected in 2004 only 21 per cent of them were female. The parties are currently busy putting the finishing touches to their tickets in each area. Final nominations do not have to be made until May 13th, but it is likely there will again be about 2,000 candidates standing for these councils on June 5th. As of yet there is little to suggest that the level of female participation will be much different during or following this contest.
There were 3.1 million people on the electoral register for the local election in 2004 and 1.9 million of them went to the polls, measured as a turnout of just under 59 per cent. While the adult population in the country has increased somewhat since 2004 this may not necessarily be reflected in a higher number of voters on the electoral register now, because there were hundreds of thousands of errors and duplicates on the register at that point five years ago.
There has been a considerable effort to tidy up the register since and voters will have an opportunity to put themselves on the supplementary register.
Nonetheless, there are still reasons to be concerned about the register’s accuracy in many council areas.
The other complicating factor in seeking to assess how many are likely to vote is that while only Irish and English citizens are entitled to vote in Dáil elections, and they and nationals of other European Union member states can vote in European elections, all persons ordinarily resident in an electoral area, irrespective of their nationality, can vote in local elections.
If all of the foreign nationals now living in Ireland were actually to vote in local elections they could have a very significant impact on the make-up of many of our councils. In some areas in Dublin city they would actually form a majority of the local electors. However, the available evidence suggests that only a small fraction of foreign nationals register and then go to vote. That said, in some areas, for example Fingal, where there are large settled foreign national communities they are registered and are likely to vote.
This fact is recognised by many of the parties who have selected candidates from within these communities for these local elections. Quite apart from national political and economic issues, these are just some of the factors which will influence and shape the local elections.