An Independent councillor has spoken out about what he believes is a “blatant attempt to subvert democracy” in scheduling many of the meetings to hear from Presidential hopefuls across the county councils on the same day, denying those seeking nomination a chance to speak to all of the local authorities.
Cllr Maurice Shortall, who was elected to Kilkenny County Council last year, said that he believed it was a deliberate ploy from party whips up and down the country.
Amongst the Independent candidates seeking a nomination are businessman Nick Delehanty, family campaigner, Maria Steen, and entrepreneur Gareth Sheridan. Candidates must be either nominated by 20 members of the Oireachtas, or be nominated by at least four local authorities – the two ‘routes’ available.
“Since I’ve been elected to Kilkenny County Council, I’ve heard from elected members across the country that we, as local representatives, don’t get enough power and say, and have to follow instructions sent down from Dublin on a regular basis,” Mr Shortall said.
“We are about a month away from the Presidential Election in Ireland, and however you feel about parties blocking candidates, we have a much bigger problem that nobody is talking about,” he continued.
“There’s a blatant attempt to subvert democracy by scheduling a lot of the Special Meetings on the same day, thus not giving the people who are trying to earn a nomination a fair chance to speak to all 31 local authorities.”
“I believe this is deliberate from party whips up and down the country, who do not want to even listen to candidates at these meetings because of their party allegiances. We, as county councils, need to be working together to ensure that all the candidates get a fair shot to attempt to attend as many councils as possible.”
Cllr Shortall pointed to the fact that 8 councils – Galway City, Kildare, Dublin City, Laois, Longford, Roscommon, Cork City, Offaly – had their Special Meeting to hear from those seeking a nomination on Monday 15th September – while the following day Tipperary, Galway County, Wicklow councils were all meeting for the same purpose.
On September 19th, South Dublin, Waterford, Wexford city and county councils were scheduled to meet, while Sligo, Leitrim, Cork, and Meath planned to meet on 22nd September, he said – adding “seems to be a lot of “independents” who are happy to go with the flow.”
Speaking to Gript this morning, Cllr Shortall said that the current scheduling was not fair to people who are putting themselves forward in the race for the Áras. He said that other alternatives to attend such as on Zoom could disadvantage candidates and called for some meetings to be rescheduled and “spaced out better to give people a fair chance.”
Independent candidate, Nick Delehanty, said that he thought that the meeting line-up was “an unfortunate clash of schedules” and added that “surely more more work could be done to avoid that.”
“The route is onerous enough for those of us seeking nomination as it is, but not having the chance to present to every council makes the task much more difficult,” he said. “It’s the same for everyone, and it feels it could be fairer and this could be avoided. It’s in everyone’s benefit if we can get to more meetings.”
He said that councillors he had spoken to had been welcoming and he hoped that something could be done to facilitate candidates addressing local authority meetings.
Last night, Fianna Fáil’s National Executive said that while they expected party councillors to “do everything they can” to support the candidacy of the party candidate, Jim Gavin, they would not order councillors to oppose independent candidates who are seeking a presidential nomination.