With under two weeks to go until voting opens in the Seanad elections the majority of parties revealed which candidates they have nominated. A total of 60 seats will be filled across a number of different panels – 49 senators will be elected while 11 will be nominated by the Taoiseach.
Seanad Éireann, the upper house of the Irish parliament, comprises a number of panels. Ballots will be counted on 30 January. A high number of former TDs and defeated general election candidates are running for a Seanad seat.
It has been revealed that the Green Party, which suffered an almost complete wipeout in November’s general election, will run just a single candidate as five of the party’s senators stand down.
The party’s outgoing senators are Pauline O’Reilly, who served as spokesperson for Education and Higher Education, Malachi O’Hara (Spokesperson for Northern Ireland, Arts and Culture, and Equality), Minister Pippa Hackett (Minister of State for Land Use and Biodiversity) along with Róisín Garvey (Spokesperson for Rural Development, Enterprise, Trade and Employment) Vincent P. Martin (Foreign Affairs and Defence) who will both stand down.
Minister of State Malcolm Noonan is the Green Party’s sole Seanad candidate. The former Minister at the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage, lost his seat in the recent General Election 2024 Carlow/Kilkenny constituency. It is understood that the majority of the party’s ten TDs who lost their seats did not wish to run for a Seanad seat, including Catherine Martin, former Minister for Arts, Media and Culture.
Others who were unsuccessful in the general election, however, will run for a Seanad seat, including Minister of State Ossian Smyth, who lost his Dáil seat, and Cllr Hazel Chu who also failed to be elected as a TD. Both are running as candidates on the Dublin University (Trinity College) panel.
Meanwhile, three other TDs who lost their seats in the general election have been appointed as Seanad nominees by Taoiseach Simon Harris. They are Fianna Fáil TD for Galway East Anne Rabbitte, Fianna Fáil TD for Longford–Westmeath Joe Flaherty, and Fine Gael TD for Dublin Fingal Alan Farrell.
Another two nominees from Fine Gael are John McNulty, who unsuccessfully contested this year’s general election in Donegal, and Leonora Carey, former chair of Fine Gael’s National Executive Council – who unsuccessfully stood in Clare in this year’s general election.
Two former Sinn Féin TDs who unexpectedly lost their seats are also running for the Seanad on the vocational panels. They are Pauline Tully of Cavan-Monaghan and Chris Andrews of Dublin Bay South, with the party running up to seven candidates on the “inside” sub-panels for the 43 vocational seats, including Northern Ireland candidate Connor Murphy.
Former Fianna Fáil senator Eugene Murphy, who ran as an Independent when he failed to make the ticket in the general election in Galway-Roscommon, has secured an outside nomination to run on the agricultural panel to gain a seat as an Independent senator. Senator Aisling Dolan, who ran for Fine Gael to represent the party in the Roscommon-Galway constituency, will also contest the Seanad Election after being unsuccessful in November.
Murphy is contesting the Agricultural Panel, as is Aisling Dolan, with both in the running for an outside seat on their respective panels.
Meanwhile, Labour will be running Sadbh O’Neill, a well known environmental campaigner who unsuccessfully contested the general election as a Labour candidate in Waterford, is running for the party in the University of Dublin panel.
Labour is nominating a total of four candidates for the vocational panels, all of whom are councillors: Nessa Cosgrave, Angela Feeney, Laura Harmon and Darragh Moriarty. Existing Labour senators Rebecca Moynihan and Annie Hoey are not seeking re-election.
The Social Democrats are running just two candidats. They are Patricia Stephenson, who unsuccessfully stood for a Dáil seat in Carlow-Kilkenny and councillor Joan Hopkins, who also failed to win a seat in Fingal East in last year’s general election.
Independent Ireland is putting forward one candidate – Galway Councillor Noel Thomas – who missed out on a seat in the general election. Aontú is also putting forward just one candidate with Cavan councillor Sarah O’Reilly also seeking a seat on the Agricultural panel.