This article will offer a very brief history of General Election contests in Laois, or rather Laois-Offaly in most cases, with the focus being on those that have taken place in (my!) living memory!
One of my earliest political memories was of hearing the results come in for the 1977 General Election as news broke of Jack Lynch’s landslide win (which ultimately would mark the last ever general election in the Republic of Ireland in which one party won enough seats to command an overall majority in Dail Éireann).
In past times the Laois-Offaly constituency was looked on as a “political barometer”, one in which the constituency results reflected the overall national trends.
However, from the 1970s onwards I think it is fair to say that this was not the case. The main trend that could be observed across elections in the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s was of Fianna Fáil’s dominance in the constituency, with the party’s vote share in Laois-Offaly usually being well above the national average.
Fianna Fáil won three seats out of five at every general election contest in Laois-Offaly between 1977 and 2007 (and the party vote share usually hovered around, or above, the 50 percent level).
If truth be told, the party never came close to losing their three seats at any time during the period, despite occasional predictions of seat losses (and maybe, in part, thanks to such predictions!) ahead of election contests, as perhaps was most notably evidenced at the 1997 and 2002 elections.
There were a number of elections in which Fianna Fáil were closer to winning a fourth seat in Laois-Offaly than they were to losing a seat, with the most obvious example here being the 2007 election.
What changed in terms of Fianna Fáil representation levels across this period was not the number of seats, but rather changes in terms of personnel and indeed the balance of power between the Laois and Offaly parts of the constituency.
Over the past half century only two Fianna Fáil TDs lost their seats in a General Election contest in Laois-Offaly – Ber Cowen in 1973 (but he would regain that seat in 1977) and John Moloney in the “earthquake election” of 2011.
In the 1970s, 1980s and early 1990s the norm was for two seats to be won by Fianna Fáil candidates from Offaly and one from a Laois-based candidate. Ger Connolly and Ber Cowen won seats for the first time in 1969.
Bracknagh-based Ger Connolly held his seat at every subsequent election until he retired ahead of the 1997 election and his ability to win a significant vote from the Portarlington area and other parts of north-east Laois was probably a major reason as to why there was two Fianna Fáil seats for Offaly candidates during this period, although Offaly was also the more populous county before the big population increases in Laois in the wake of the Celtic Tiger saw Laois overtake Offaly in population terms.
The Cowen family would hold a seat at every general election across this period, with the exception of the 1973-1977 period, although this tradition will be broken at the upcoming election, following on Barry Cowen’s election to the European Parliament in June.
Brian Cowen would emerge as the dominant force in Laois-Offaly in the 1990s and 2000s (and would, of course, replace Bertie Ahern as Taoiseach in 2008), topping the poll in Laois-Offaly at every election between 1992 and 2007.
Prior to this, Liam Hyland (from Ballacolla) had topped the poll at the elections in 1982 and 1989 (Oliver J Flanagan had consistently topped the poll at every general election in Laois-Offaly between 1944 and 1973 and would do so again for one last occasion in 1981).
Laois Fianna Fáil provided one of the three Fianna Fáil seats between 1977 and 1997. From 1977 on, Fianna Fáil always ran four candidates in Laois-Offaly (2011 being the only exception) and two of these candidates always hailed from Laois.
Between 1977 and 1997 one of these candidates would be elected (Paddy Lalor in 1977 and then Liam Hyland at the next set of general elections) and the other Laois-based candidate would effectively act as the “sweeper candidate”, who would provide the vote transfers to help ensure the three higher placed Fianna Fáil candidates won election.
Hyland himself would be the “sweeper” candidate in 1977, while the sweeper role was often taken by Jerry Lodge in the 1980s and later Joe Dunne in 1989 and John Moloney in 1992.
Picture: Alf Harvey.
Moloney came within just over two hundred votes of edging out Ger Connolly for the third Fianna Fáil seat in 1992 and this proved a harbinger of a major shake up in terms of Fianna Fáil’s Dáil representation in 1997.
With Liam Hyland now in Europe and Ger Connolly retiring, Fianna Fáil succeeded in retaining their three seats. The two first-time Fianna Fáil TDs would both hail from Laois – John Moloney and Sean Fleming – and Laois would account for two of the three Fianna Fáil seats at the next two elections, with the second Offaly candidate (Ger Killally in 1997 and 2002, John Foley in 2007) now effectively taking on the sweeper candidate role.
Fianna Fáil lost a seat in Laois-Offaly at the 2011 earthquake election, but the ability to still win two seats on a day in which Fianna Fáil would only win 20 seats nationally and fail to win seats in over half of the constituencies was testament to the party’s relative strength in this area.
During the 2010s, Fianna Fáil consistently won two seats in Laois-Offaly (or in Laois and Offaly in 2016), with these seats being filled by Sean Fleming and Barry Cowen.
Fine Gael won three seats in Laois-Offaly in 1973, with Ballyroan’s Charlie McDonald joining Oliver J. Flanagan and Tom Enright in the Dáil. This would mark the only occasion that Fine Gael ever held three seats in Laois-Offaly, with Fianna Fáil regaining the Ber Cowen seat in 1977, as noted above.
Over the next few decades Fine Gael would win two seats in Laois-Offaly at most of the general election contests but would occasionally lose one of these seats, with seats being lost to Labour’s Pat Gallagher in 1992 and the Progressive Democrat’s Tom Parlon in 2002.
Between 1969 and 2011 (with the exception of Charlie McDonald’s win in 1973) the Fine Gael seats were filled by members of the Flanagan and Enright families. Oliver J. Flanagan, who initially held a seat in Laois-Offaly as a Monetary Reform candidate (1943 and 1944 elections) and then as an Independent (1948 and 1951 elections), was first elected as a Fine Gael candidate in 1954 and held this seat until his retirement ahead of the 1987 election, topping the poll on a number of occasions and winning very large vote shares especially in the election contests in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s.
His son, Charlie Flanagan, retained the party – and family – seat in the 1987 election and would successfully hold this seat at every subsequent general election, apart from the 2002 contest, up to, and including, the 2020 election.
Picture: Alf Harvey.
Tom Enright held a seat in Laois-Offaly between 1969 and 2002, with the exception of the 1992-97 period, and his daughter, Olwyn Enright, subsequently won a seat for Fine Gael at the 2002 and 2007 elections, before she retired ahead of the 2011 election, bringing an end to over four decades of political representation by the Enright family.
With Charlie Flanagan retiring from electoral politics at the upcoming election, the 2024 election will be the first election in eight decades that will not feature a member of the Flanagan family.
The only other Fine Gael candidate to win a Dáil seat over the past half century of elections was Marcella Corcoran-Kennedy who won the “Offaly seat” for Fine Gael in 2011 and held this seat in the Offaly three-seat constituency in 2016, before losing out at the 2020 election, in which she was the “odd one out” of the six incumbents who vied to retain their seats in the newly recreated (albeit for just one electoral contest) Laois-Offaly five-seat constituency.
Labour’s William Davin held a seat in Laois-Offaly at every general election contest from the founding of the State until he passed away in March 1956.
Labour actually held two seats in Laois-Offaly for a few months between the June and September elections in 1927, with Patrick Gill from Portarlington joining Davin in the Dáil after the first of these election contests but lost it to Cumann na nGaedheal’s William Aird in the second of the two 1927 elections.
After William Davin’s death, Labour would hold a seat in Laois-Offaly on only two other occasions. Henry Byrne won a seat for Labour in 1965 but did not defend this in 1969 and Labour lost this seat to Fianna Fáil.
Over the past five decades of general election contests, Labour won a seat on just one occasion, with Tullamore’s Pat Gallagher surfing the Spring Tide in 1992 to edge out Fine Gael’s Tom Enright, after a strong electoral debut in 1989.
Gallagher lost this seat to Fine Gael in 1997 and subsequently retired from electoral politics in 2000. After Gallagher’s retirement, Labour tended to fare poorly across subsequent general election contests and only challenged for a seat on one other occasion.
Picture: Alf Harvey.
In 2011 the Gilmore Gale pushed John Whelan into contention for a seat in Laois-Offaly and he survived until the final count, but still fell almost 2,000 votes short of taking the final seat.
From Gallagher’s retirement onwards, Sinn Féin had effectively replaced Labour as the largest left-wing party in Laois-Offaly with the Sinn Féin candidate, Brian Stanley, outpolling his Labour Party rival at every general election contest in the 21st Century.
Stanley failed to win a seat on his first two outings (in 2002 and 2007), although he did win seats on Portlaoise Town Council and Laois County Council during the first decade of the 2000s. Brian Stanley’s breakthrough came in the 2011 election when he proved to be the main beneficiary of Fianna Fáil’s declining fortunes, and he won the fourth seat at that general election contest.
Picture: Alf Harvey.
He would be comfortably re-elected in 2016 in the three-seat Laois constituency and topped the poll in Laois-Offaly in 2020, when the overall surge in Sinn Féin support nationally saw him elected on the first count with a surplus of over 5,000 votes.
With Brian Stanley recently parting ways with Sinn Féin and opting to contest the next general election as an independent candidate, and with a number of other non-party candidates, including Aisling Moran and Elaine Mullally, contesting this election also, non-party candidates are poised to win a large share of the vote in the newly recreated Laois three-seater.
Carol Nolan, who was elected in Offaly in 2016 as a Sinn Féin candidate, won a seat in the very last general election to be contested in the old Laois-Offaly constituency in 2020.
Prior to this election, Laois-Offaly offered little in the way of success for non-party candidates across the last half century of general election contests. In the 2010s Offaly-based candidates, such as John Foley (formerly a Fianna Fáil general election candidate) and John Leahy (who would himself contest the 2016 election in Offaly for Renua), polled well in Laois-Offaly, but never strongly enough to secure a seat.
During the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s and early 2000s, non-party candidates generally had very little impact at general elections in Laois-Offaly. Up to the 2011 election, the strongest performance by a non-party candidate came from James Guinan, who won just over five percent of the vote at the 1977 election.
The best known of the independent candidates contesting Laois-Offaly across this period was Joe “The Hesh” McCormack, who contested general election contests in Laois-Offaly in 1981, February 1982, November 1982, 1987, 1989, 1992, 1997, 2002 and 2007, as well as the by-election contest in 1984 which would prove to be his most impressive performance, winning 1,471 first preference votes as the only Laois-based candidate to contest that election.
With independent candidates not emerging as a force until the 2011 election, any decline in support for Fianna Fáil or Fine Gael tended to create opportunity spaces for the other political parties, such as Labour in the 1990s and Sinn Féin in the 21st Century.
The other party to make a significant impact on electoral politics in Laois-Offaly was the Progressive Democrats, with that party contesting each general election contest in Laois-Offaly in the late 1980s, 1990s and 2000s.
The party’s standard-bearer across the first four elections was Portarlington-based Cathy Honan, who won between six percent and ten percent of the vote in each of these contests and survived until the final count in the 1987 and 1989 elections.
chatting to Mrs Mary Malone in Portarlington
Tom Parlon replaced her as the Progressive Democrat candidate in the 2002 election and he won a seat in this election, winning over 14 percent of the vote. Laois-Offaly’s time as “Parlon Country” would be relatively short-lived, however, and he lost this seat at the 2007 election, with Charlie Flanagan regaining the seat he lost in 2002.
 voted in General Elections){kind=link}