Seanad byelection set to cost over €500k

The byelection for the vacant Trinity College seat in Seanad Éireann is likely to cost well over €500,000.

The seat has been vacant since the long-serving TCD senator Ivana Bacik won the Dublin Bay South byelection as a Labour Party candidate in July.

The writ for the byelection was moved in the Upper House last week by Ms Bacik’s Labour Party colleague Rebecca Moynihan. The poll has to be called by Minister for Housing and Local Government Darragh’ O’Brien within six months. It is widely expected the byelection will now take place in Spring.

There were 70,000 eligible voters on the register for Dublin University for last year’s Seanad election.

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Each of the candidates is entitled to send an election pamphlet by free post. In addition, the ballot papers are sent to electors (who are resident throughout the world) by registered post. Some 12,000 ballot papers were returned by An Post because the voter was not at home or did not collect the letter at a local sorting office, or were no longer at the address on the register.

The percentage of graduates who vote in Seanad elections on the two university registers is frequently around 20 per cent.

Normal postage costs are €1 while registered postage costs €8 or more, although reductions are available for bulk orders. However, with an electorate of 70,000 the total cost is expected to exceed €500,000.

Among those who have already declared their candidacy are media lecturer and former army officer, Dr Tom Clonan; climate academic and former Green Party councillor Sadhbh O’Neill; and former rugby international Hugo McNeill.

All will be running as Independent candidates although Mr McNeill is being endorsed by Fine Gael. His wife is the Dun Laoghaire TD Jennifer Carroll-McNeill.

Cllr Hazel Chu, the Green Party’s former mayor of Dublin is also said to be considering her candidacy. She ran in the byelection held earlier this year for the vacancy caused by Fine Gael TD Michael Darcy’s seat.

Ursula Quill, a PhD student, is also running as an Independent. She is a former assistant to Ms Bacik and is being supported by the Labour Party.

Another PhD student at Trinity, Ryan Alberto Ó Giobúin has also declared as a candidate. Social Democrats councillor Carly Bailey and Gisèle Scanlon, president of TCD’s Graduate Students’ Union, are also among the candidates who have expressed their intention to run.