Sinn Fein leader Mary Lou McDonald arrived in Laois as part of a constituency tour yesterday, Wednesday August 29.
Laois TD Brian Stanley accompanied Ms McDonald on her visits to different groups in Portlaoise and Mountmellick, and highlighted that Sinn Féin will try to put four candidates through to the Laois County Council in the local government elections in 2019.
“We will be aiming to double our local government representation in Laois. We want to go from two to four in the county. The election department will look at this but we will be looking at four candidates, and trying to take four seats.
“We will be going all out to take four seats. We want to make sure that there’s strong Republican representation in Laois/Offaly,” said Deputy Stanley.
In the last Laois County Council election in 2014, Sinn Féin ran four candidates – Cllrs Aidan Mullins and Caroline Dwane-Stanley, Sharon Bailey and Rhoda Dooley-Brogan.
Ms Dooley-Brogan lost out on a place for a seat on the eighth count, coming in with 1,071 votes in the Borris-in-Ossory/Mountmellick municipal district.
She came in 316 votes short of the sixth elected representative, David Goodwin.
“The Western area, where we narrowly missed the last time, we’re going for a seat there this time. There are young, determined, people there – and some not so young – who want to ensure that there is a councillor there,” he added.
‘We will be going hell for leather’
Stanley then emphasised the importance of local government elections.
“We will be going hell for leather, we will be leaving no stone unturned to get four Cllrs into the chamber, to make sure that Sinn Féin has a strong presence in there.
“We view the local government elections as being very important, and having good Cllrs on the ground are worth their weight in gold.
“We have two excellent Cllrs in Laois here, two full-time Cllrs and they’re very diligent on the ground,” he said.
Sinn Féin leader Ms McDonald said that the decision to run a second Sinn Féin candidate in the Laois area will be a decision based on a mathematic assessment by the Sinn Féin party.
“All elections are very competitive, there’s no such thing as a safe seat. Obviously we have a sitting TD here, a very well-established person in Brian Stanley. Then the job of establishing how many candidates, or how that falls out, that’s done not by us but the Party makes an assessment, there’s mathematics as well as politics in all of this,” said the Sinn Féin leader.
Brian said: “I wouldn’t have been pipped, even by the Party, to take a seat in 2011. But we will be making sure that there’s a strong Sinn Féin representation returned,” added Deputy Stanley.
He said: “We also have to remember that Laois could effectively be left with two TDs after the next election. It’s our job to make sure that Laois; has a TD, but also that Laois/Offaly has a Sinn Féin TD or TDs.”
The Laois TD also highlighted his objections to Portarlington’s move into the Kildare South constituency.
“We have to take into account that there’s a huge chunk of Laois missing now. I said about Laois having two TDs, three maximum after the next election – Kildare will have eight. We don’t want to be parochial about that but there’s a piece of North Laois gone into South Kildare.”
“It’s a bit of a mess like, mixing up local government with Dáil boundaries, something which Sinn Féin has been banging the drum about.
“We recognise the need to move and to change as the demographics change and the popular shifts, but we shouldn’t try to cross local government boundaries as far as they should not be crossed in terms of having part of your area in one county and another part of your area in another county,” he added.
As part of her visit in Laois, Mary Lou McDonald met with childcare providers, community alert groups, autism campaigners and parents supporting the building of a new school in Portlaoise.
She was also set to meet the Portlaoise Hospital Action Committee after the press announcement on Wednesday evening.
SEE ALSO – Anna May McHugh appointed to ‘incredibly prestigious’ position
