This Friday is General Election day, and polling stations nationwide will be open from 7am to 10pm, giving everyone an opportunity to cast their vote and help decide which form of government we will have for up to the next five years.
Mallow voters are heading into uncharted territory in this election, having been moved from Cork East into Cork North Central in the last constituency review. This has meant that Mallow is now part of a constituency including the northside of Cork city, plus Ballincollig. This decision to take Mallow out of Cork East has had ramifications for local voters, as the town is now part of Cork’s northside for voting purposes, and the decision by Labour TD Seán Sherlock to retire has lost the town a strong vote-getter. Seán has been replaced on the Labour ticket by Cllr Eoghan Kenny who has been canvassing energetically in recent months, and another Mallow-based candidate is Independent Ireland’s Ken O’Flynn, who is a sitting City Councillor and has hopes of grabbing one of the five seats on offer. In total there are 21 candidates in the running for the five available seats, which will make for a very long ballot paper, and there is a wide spread of party affiliations. Interestingly, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael both have three candidates in the running, none of them based around Mallow, though Cllr Gearóid Murphy did attempt to get on the ticket, without success.
Given the fact that Mallow and Ballincollig have been added to the Cork North Central Constituency, and the number of seats has been increased to five, it is very difficult to make any predictions. The four outgoing TDs are Thomas Gould (SF), Pádraig O’Sullivan (FF), Colm Burke (FG) and Mick Barry (SP), and all these will be strongly in the running.
The full list of candidates is as follows; Deputy Thomas Gould (Sinn Féin), Deputy Pádraig O’Sullivan (Fianna Fáil), Deputy Colm Burke (Fine Gael), Deputy Mick Barry (Solidarity – People Before Profit), Cllr. Tony Fitzgerald (Fianna Fáil), Cllr. John Maher (Labour Party), Cllr. Oliver Moran (Green Party), Cllr. Joe Lynch (Sinn Féin), Cllr. Garret Kelleher (Fine Gael), Cllr. Eoghan Kenny (Labour Party), Cllr. Ken O’Flynn (Independent Ireland), Rachel Hurley Roche (Independent/Workers’ Party), Finian Toomey (Aontú), Imelda Daly (Fine Gael), Derek Blighe (Ireland First), Ciarán McCarthy (Social Democrats), Sandra Murphy Kelleher (Fianna Fáil), Susan Doyle (Social Democrats), John Donohoe (Independent), Martin Condon (Independent) and Joseph Gerard Peters (Independent).
The counting of votes for Cork North Central will begin on Saturday morning in Nemo Rangers GAA, Cork city, though Mallow GAA Complex will host counts for the Cork East, Cork North West and Cork South West Constituencies. It’s too early to say who the winners will be, but we can say that surefire winners will be the pupils of local schools, which will be closed to classes on Friday as their schools will be used as voting centres.