Former Sinn Féin MEP for Dublin Lynn Boylan has been selected as one of the party’s candidates in the Seanad elections ahead of the noon deadline on Monday for nominations.
The party has seven contestants for seats on the the five vocational panels and will include two from the North – former MP for Foyle Elisha McCallion and outgoing Belfast Senator Niall Ó Donnghaile.
The Green Party has also completed its election ticket and will run high-profile European and general election candidate Saoirse McHugh from Mayo, outgoing Senator Pippa Hackett and Galway West Cllr Pauline O'Reilly.
There was surprise at the exclusion of a number of the 13 candidates under consideration for nominations including Clare counsellor Róisín Garvey, party chair and prominent Dublin City counsellor Cllr Hazel Chu, Dublin Mid-West byelection and general election candidate Peter Kavanagh and Louth counsellor Mark Deery.
Internal disagreement
There was an internal disagreement about the marking system and voting process after candidates were interviewed by members of the Greens’ executive.
Ms Chu as chair of the party stood aside from the decision-making because she was a candidate. Party deputy leader Catherine Martin also recused herself as her brother Vincent P Martin was among the candidates.
The Labour Party has also completed its selection and will run Cllr Marie Sherlock on the labour panel, Cllr Annie Hoey on the agricultural panel, Cllr Rebecca Moynihan on the administrative panel and Cllr Mark Wall on the commercial panel.
Former TD Dominic Hannigan did not get party approval to run but has already secured an outside nomination allowing him to contest the election.
The party’s TDs are exclusively male and but the majority of its Seanad candidates are female.
Fianna Fáil’s Seanad list for the vocational panels is expected to include 10 of the 16 TDs who lost their seats, including Lisa Chambers, Fiona O’Loughlin, Timmy Dooley and Malcolm Byrne who had only been a TD since the November byelection.
Fine Gael faced criticism following publication of its party nominations which includes three women in the 13 nominations but excludes high-profile former TD Kate O’Connell. Cllrs Sharon Tolan (Louth/Meath East), Aisling Dolan (Roscommon-Galway) and Emer Currie (Dublin West) were selected.
Standing down
Minister of State Catherine Byrne had also been mentioned as a potential candidate but decided not to seek a nomination. Former minister Regina Doherty, and former TD Marcella Corcoran-Kennedy also stood down from electoral politics.
In Sinn Féin, Ms Boylan, a leading light in the party who lost her European Parliament seat in the 2019 elections, will run on the agricultural panel along with Ballina, Co Mayo, counsellor Gerry Murray.
Outgoing Senator Fintan Warfield will run on the cultural and educational panel while Senators Máire Devine and Paul Gavan are contestants on the labour panel.
The nomination of two candidates from the North is seen as part of the party’s intensifying focus on unification and a Border poll.
Ms McCallion was elected an MLA for Foyle in 2017 succeeding the late deputy first minister Martin McGuinness and later that year was elected to Westminster as MP for Foyle. Two years later in the Westminster election in December she lost out to SDLP leader Colum Eastwood.
The final selection was made at the meeting of the party’s ard comhairle or national executive on Saturday. Leader Mary Lou McDonald said on Sunday in a statement that the party’s Senators “will help to advance the party’s agenda of giving workers and families a break, building homes and reducing and freezing rents, tackling the trolley crisis, securing the State pension at 65 years of age and preparing for Irish unity”.
