The big issues and big questions as Kilkenny goes to the polls in Local Elections 2024

In Kilkenny, 50 local candidates are seeking your vote to represent you on Kilkenny County Council for the next five years. Twenty-three candidates are doing likewise to represent you in Europe.

The decisions they make and policies they support – on behalf of us, the electorate – will affect us all.
The team behind the Kilkenny People and Kilkenny Live will be present throughout this year’s election count at the Lyrath Estate convention centre. We’ll be bringing you live, up-to-the-minute information from the count centre, as the winners celebrate and the runners-up count their losses. You can follow our liveblog on KilkennyLive and you won’t miss a minute of it.

The various campaigns are now entering their final week, the last bits of canvassers’ shoe leather are being worn out, the voters are ready to have their say.

There’s no shortage of talking points as we prepare to head for the polls, and the result will likely throw up plenty more. With still a few days to go, there are a few questions to which we are looking forward to getting an answer.

How will the Government parties fare?
Fianna Fail and Fine Gael have dominated the council in recent years, and the two parties hold 19 of the 24 seats between them on the incumbent council. Two sitting Fianna Fail and one Fine Gael councillor are not contesting this election, but both parties have many new faces coming forward to put their names on the ballot.

Whither Sinn Fein?
The last time out, the 2019 Local Elections was a disaster for the party. They lost all three sitting councillors and were left with no representation on the council until the defection by then-Labour Party councillor Denis Hynes over two years later in 2021.
In the 2020 General Election, however, Sinn Fein’s Kathleen Funchion topped the poll with a massive 17,493 first preference votes. The record result was seen as a clear sign the party had plenty of voter support here. They could have run a second candidate even. Since then, support for Sinn Fein nationally has slumped, dropping in the most recent poll. They are running eight candidates in Kilkenny, including three in the city.

Can Labour make any inroads?
Sitting councillor Tomas Breathnach has been a mainstay in South Kilkenny since 2004. Elsewhere, things have proven tricky since the retirement of Maurice Shortall in Castlecomer. Two candidates running in the city aim to retake a seat there, once a stronghold of Seamus Pattison. It may be challenging.

What of the Green Party?
The junior partner in Government often gets a raw deal. The Greens hold just one seat on the current council — for years held by Malcolm Noonan, and now occupied by Cllr Maria Dollard who was co-opted on the former’s election to the Dail. Newcomer Kristina Doyle enters the fray in the Callan-Thomastown area, and Benny McDonagh in the south. With other issues pushing climate change out of front and centre in some areas recently, will there still be room for Green voices on the local council?

How will the independent candidates do?
The outspoken Eugene McGuinness announced his arrival in the 2019 Local Election, winning plenty of supporters during his campaign. Half a dozen other independents are now seeking to replicate his success. Some of them have been very vocal on social media – will that translate to votes at the polling station?

The Social Democrats, People Before Profit, Irish People’s Party, and the Irish Freedom Party are all running candidates, each hoping to be their party’s first-ever elected member in County Kilkenny.

What are the issues?
Well, it depends who you talk to.
Some are the old dependables, for example, housing. This remains a huge issue for everyone —from those who don’t have it, those who can hardly afford it, tenants, landlords and owner occupiers. Even big employers are identifying the lack of housing as a major issue limiting their growth and as an impediment to attracting and retaining talent.
The cost of living comes up again and again — people feel their euro is getting them less and less.
Has immigration been a big issue? It seems to be coming up a bit more, particularly in certain areas and for some candidates. However, many of the main established party candidates have also said it hasn’t been coming up much at all for them. Could it be a quiet issue that people are keeping to themselves — or has it been overblown in the media and in particular, on social media? It will be interesting to see the performance of those candidates who have made it the central platform of their campaign.

About a year out from a general election, with one more Budget to be passed, this local election will be seen as a bellwether, to a certain extent, for what is to come. Councillors will have to give input and adopt their own annual budget of around E100 million, which affects a lot of the local services and amenities we all use — from social housing and road maintenance through to street cleaning, fire, libraries, parks to economic and community development. They are responsible for agreeing the price of commercial rates, as well as the level of Local Property Tax to be paid.

At the end of the day, what most people want from their local councillor remains unchanged —someone who is seen to be busy, not afraid to put in the work, and can help them with the issues that affect their daily lives. Can they help get a house for someone locally? Yes, perhaps. Can they rewrite national housing policy? No.

If they have good relationships with colleagues in the Dail, they may be able to make representations. They may have the ear of someone among the council executive who can progress matters. If they win enough public support, perhaps others will take notice, or they will find a platform for their message.

Some of the issues some candidates have campaigned on are things that ultimately, a local councillor can have little influence on. They are issues that require addressing at a national, or indeed, a European level.

It’s interesting looking back. Ten years ago, I did a survey of candidates contesting the 2014 Local Election. Many of them are since retired or were not elected. Some are sitting councillors to this day.

One of the questions asked was what the big issue on the doorsteps was. Unsurprisingly given the political climate at the time, the answer for almost all candidates was ‘water charges’. The timing was a bit of a perfect storm; canvassers had to knock on doors amid huge public protests and unhappiness with the planned charges. With the benefit of hindsight, we now know that the groundswell of anger toward the Government was enough that plans to introduced the charges were abandoned within two years.

Another question asked which nearly always received the same answer from all the candidates was: ‘The brewery site/mart sites in Kilkenny City - what’s the one thing you would like to see in them?’
A lot has changed in 10 years. The former mart site remains undeveloped, although plans are in the offing for it.
The former brewery site has seen a lot of development in that time. It now boasts new state-of-the-art office blocks, a long-sought skatepark for young people, a linear park, and now a jewel in the crown in the new Mayfair Library building. These are all things that the council and the elected members have helped advance, and for those asking what can they do, there are some tangible things to acknowledge.

But the one thing that nearly all candidates said they would like to see was a third-level education campus of some description. Sadly, this is one thing that has not come to pass despite its seemingly universal popularity. Perhaps it’s something that requires more will at a national level, and perhaps it’s something the next council will attempt to take on.

So as well as fixing the road and cutting ribbons, the role of the local councillor is a varied one. Those 24 people must meet and try to find common ground, compromise, and progress things, all putting on the black and amber jersey to do their best for Kilkenny. They must have in their head a vision of the kind of Kilkenny we all want to live in for the next five, 10, 50 years.
So, whatever you do next Friday, June 7, make sure you get out and vote. Make your voice heard, and your views known. Otherwise, don’t complain for the next five years!

Finally, the best way to keep up to date on all the happenings at the election count over the weekend of June 8 and 9 is to follow our social media channels and most importantly, www.kilkennypeople.ie. 

The KilkennyLive team will be working hard to bring you all the action from the count centre, all the drama, the highs and lows, the little bits of colour and most importantly — the winners and losers — as we find out what our next council will look like. We’ll see you there — and if not, get in touch on our live blog or social media, and let us know what you make of it all. Until then, happy reading.
Sam Matthews