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By-Election 2019 : Dublin Fingal

Friday 29th November 2019 will see four by-elections take place in Ireland to fill the seats vacated by TDs who were elected to the European Parliament in May's EU elections. The elections will take place in Wexford, Dublin Fingal, Dublin Mid-West, and Cork North-Central. Given that the Dáil is currently operating under a minority Fine Gael/Independent government, facilitated by Fianna Fáil, the results of these four contests could have a major impact on Dáil arithmetic. Based on the 2016 election results, current trends, and candidates I will analyse each seat individually, in individual articles. Today's article is focused on the constituency of Dublin Fingal.

This seat was vacated by former Independents4Change TD Claire Daly, when she was elected as a member of the European Parliament in May 2019. The grouping/political party will be standing Dean Mulligan in the hopes of keeping the seat, but this is quite unlikely. While Daly did manage to achieve 9,480 votes in the 2016 General elected, her running mate Barry Martin pulled in 2,412, which doesn't fall far short of the total votes of Fianna Fáil candidates and Fine Gael candidates in the constituency.

While there is just one Independents4Change candidate running in the by-election, to date five independents have thrown their hat in the ring, including former presidential, and EU Parliament hopeful Gemma O'Doherty. While she had failed to be nominated to stand in the presidential election of 2018, and received a poor vote in the Dublin constituency if the EU elections of 2019, it will be worth seeing if the anti-immigration message will resonate with the people of Fingal.

While one candidate has received backlash for her anti-immigrant views, another has been receiving strong criticism for using ethnic slurs against the Irish traveller community. Fianna Fáil senator Lorraine Clifford-Lee has been criticised for a litany of offensive tweets dating back several years. However if trends on offensive language in politics, most notably the 1000% jump in support for 2018 presidential candidate Peter Casey when he took aim at Irish travelers, are to continue, then Clifford-Lee should still stand a strong chance of winning this by-election.

Former Minister for Health, Dr James Reilly, will contest the by-election for Fine Gael. Reilly narrowly lost out on retaining his seat in 2016, to Sinn Féin's health spokesperson Louise O'Reilly, but will be hoping to return to the Dáil sooner rather than later.

While Mulligan, Clifford-Lee, and Reilly will be seriously contesting this seat, many others will be hoping to secure a respectable vote and build themselves and their parties for the General Election which will see five seats up for grabs. In this category are Sinn Féin's Ann Graves, Tracey Carey of the Social Democrats, the Green Party's Joe O'Brien, and Labour's Duncan Smith.


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