Mayo Councillor Michael Kilcoyne: TD or not to be?
by Dr. Richard Martin
There are three certainties in life.
Death. Taxes. And independent Councillor Micheal Kilcoyne topping the poll in the Castlebar Municipal District in June.
A heavyweight in the council chamber, the tide is in for independents and SF.
Will he break the 3,000 first preference votes barrier? He came close in 2014. He got 2,922 first preference votes on that occasion. In 2019 he got 2,592 first preference votes with 18.7 per cent of the vote share.
Roughly one in five of the electorate gave Councillor Kilcoyne their first preference vote. That’s an astonishing statistic.
In March at a council meeting Councillor Blackie Gavin said: “People are getting fed up. I am getting it on the doorsteps and they don’t want to see us coming, they want to see independent people coming.
"They told me ‘Blackie, if you were running as an independent we would vote for you’ but they don’t want to see Fianna Fáil or Fine Gael coming. I have got that message loud and clear and they don’t want to see us coming."
Blackie Gavin voiced what many of us see and feel. There will be a contraction in the vote for the establishment parties and an expansion in the vote for independents.
Councillor Blackie Gavin is a virtual shoo-in for the second place but a sizeable chunk of his first preference vote could shift over to Councillor Kilcoyne to bring him over the 3,000 first preference vote barrier.
As his election to the council in June 2024 is a virtual formality the big question with Councillor Kilcoyne is the next general election.
Will he stand? And, if so, with who?
He needs a party machine to bring him over the line. His politics is left of centre, so that rules out FG and they have a sitting candidate in place.
That leaves FF or SF. If he were to run under the SF banner along with RCW (Deputy Rose Conway-Walsh) and Councillor Gerry Murray, SF would likely claim three of the five seats with disciplined vote management.
But do RCW and SF want Kilcoyne on the ticket? RCW got over 3,000 votes in the last general election in the county town. All three ballot boxes were SF, but we haven’t seen too much of her over the past five years.
Her constituency office is in Ballina. Ballina has two constituency offices. Castlebar has one. Castlebar is the county town. It’s unlikely that she will receive the same level of support in the town in 2025 and Alan Dillon is running a tidy operation on Linenhall Street.
He will poll far stronger in the town at the next general election. He will likely take one box especially as he is now a junior minister and rising star in FG. The realpolitik of it is this.
The vast majority of Kilcoyne’s vote translates to SF at general election time. If that is the case it would be foolish of SF not to try and lure him onside.
Are the politics of SF all that radical?
The slow ebb of time has completely enmeshed them in the constitutional system. They could sit in Leinster House and then at the same time try and destroy the State from the outside. Something had to give.
Eventually, SF chose to sit on the inside and recognise the State.
Rory O’Bradaigh predicted the road that SF would take as far back as 1986 at the famous Ard Fheis in the Mansion House, where SF decided to end abstentionism and take their seats in Leinster House.
The Armalite has now gone away you know. The caterpillar has become the butterfly. Policy wise SF are the SDLP on steroids. Their main focus is housing, rent and health.
Councillor Kilcoyne’s main focus is housing, rent and health. It’s not a quantum leap for either side. More of a shuffle down the corridor into the next adjoining office.
Councillor Kilcoyne running with SF in the next GE is a win-win for both SF and Councillor Kilcoyne. He leaves local politics and enters the Dáil.
SF would consolidate their power in the town. It would be a disaster for FF and FG if the Councillor Kilcoyne power base in Castlebar and SF were to unite.
Neither Lisa Chambers nor Alan Dillon would defeat Councillor Kilcoyne in the town environs.
Not a hope.