It's anyone's game in Nenagh with Local Elections just around the corner

In 2019, a closely fought battle for Nenagh eventually saw no change at the council table as all five sitting councillors were returned.

At the time, 11 candidates fought for five seats with the victors being Cllr Ger Darcy, Cllr Seamus Morris, Cllr Hughie Mcgrath, Cllr Joe Hannigan and Cllr Michael O’Meara.

Now, five years later, the political landscape of Nenagh has changed. Two of the five elected councillors in 2019 are retiring from the council this year, which means even if the remaining three retain their seats there are two spaces left to fill with newcomers.

An interesting point to note is that Cllr Darcy’s retirement leaves the current line up without a Fine Gael representative which could provide an opening for Eleanor Maher, the only Fine Gael representative from Nenagh on the line up of electees. In saying that, the current line up of Nenagh councillors is made up of mostly non-party representatives so party allegiance may not be an important factor for voters.

The remaining contenders, Cllr Morris, Cllr Hannigan and Cllr O’Meara are all heavyweights in the race, each with a number of terms on the council already served, so they will be difficult to dethrone but nothing is out of the realm of possibility in this year’s election.

Only two of the eight candidates running in Nenagh this year are actually from the town of Nenagh itself, they are Cllr Seamus Morris and Damian O’Donoghue. An interesting point to note on this pair is that Damian O’Donoghue is running on behalf of Sinn Féin, an ex-party of Cllr Morris.

Damian ran in 2019 for Sinn Féin after Cllr Morris’ resignation from the party claiming he was “subject to a litany of bullying behaviour by some party members”.Although Damian lost out the last time, the distance of Cllr Morris’ departure from Sinn Féin as well as the growing national favour towards his party may play a part in giving Damian the boost he needs this time around.

Louise Morgan Walsh is the only other non-councillor candidate for this year’s election that was also present on the ballot in 2019. Louise is running on behalf of the Labour Party and is from the Carrigatoher area just outside of Nenagh town.

The newcomers to the ballot this year will be the aforementioned Eleanor Maher and two Cloughjordan-based contenders, Ryan O’Meara who is running on behalf of Fianna Fáil and Iva Pocock who is a member of the Green Party.

This year’s group have all entered the race on a relatively level playing field. Unlike previous years, a welcome mix of varied backgrounds, age and gender combined with great political and local experience has made for a very worthy set of contenders.

Ultimately, it will be whoever shows up to vote on the day that will be the real decider.