Sir, – Noel Whelan's piece examining the background of the so-called Independent councillors elected at the local elections was quite revealing ("Independents can never be seen as a homogenous group", Opinion & Analysis, May 31st).
If you do the maths from the information he provided, you can deduce that 194 candidates who were not members of registered political parties were elected to local authorities. Of these, 35 are former members of Fianna Fáil, and approximately half of which were still members of that party until weeks before the election. Some 17 others are former members of Fine Gael, and 10 are former members of the Labour Party. Some 22 others were backed by Independent members of Dáil Éireann.
So in other words, less than two-thirds of the “Independent” candidates were genuinely Independent, and together they won just 12 per cent of the total number of seats.
So how does this reality square with the notion, which seems to have been accepted universally, that Independent candidates swept the boards at the recent elections at the expense of the“established political parties”, when 58 per cent of the seats were won by Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil and Labour with a further 17 per cent of the seats going to Sinn Féin?
Furthermore, how can any of the 22 members who were elected with the backing of current Oireachtas members possibly claim to be “Independent”?
For example, the group of councillors backed by Michael Lowry in North Tipperary describe themselves as “Team Lowry”, and vote together as a block in the county council. They share a website, used joint election posters and regular advertise jointly in the local media.
Prof Basil Chubb described a political party as “any group of persons organised to acquire and exercise political power”. So what is this Lowry group if not a political party by another name? And how can they possibly claim to be “Independent” when they clearly dance to Mr Lowry’s tune?
It would certainly seem that while many voters sought to reject the political party system in order to support Independent candidates, a large number of them were sold a pup by candidates who were anything but “Independent”. – Yours, etc,
BARRY WALSH,
Brooklawn,
Clontarf,
Dublin 3.