‘The phone has gotten busy!’: John Gibbons on his new role as an Athlone councillor

When councillors gathered for the first Athlone Moate Municipal District meeting of 2025, there was a new face among them.

John Gibbons, a long-time resident of Garnafailagh, and a key supporter and adviser to Kevin 'Boxer' Moran, took his seat in the Athlone council chamber for the first time having been co-opted onto Westmeath County Council after Boxer's ascent to Dáil Eireann.

It capped a busy twelve months on the political front, after he had served as campaign manager for the incoming Minister of State's hugely successful local and general election bids in June and November.

John recently had a chance to meet with the Westmeath Independent to talk about his political involvement to date and his new role as a local representative.

Over a cup of coffee in the Sheraton Athlone Hotel, he was asked how he was settling in as a councillor. "The phone has gotten busy!" he smiled.

"There was a lull over the Christmas, but now the phone calls and emails are starting to come in.

"I think this is an exciting time for Athlone and a challenging time for Athlone. There are the challenges around housing for everybody.

"The way I would normally look at things is that I look for solutions, not problems, in work and in life. And I hope to bring that to the council."

Although he has spent decades living in Athlone, he is not a native of the town.

"I am here for more than 40 years, but I don't think that qualifies me as being from here!" he said. "I'm from Leitrim originally. I came to Athlone in 1980, when work brought me here, and I've been here ever since."

His job at that time focused on water resources - hydrometric work - for An Foras Forbartha, the national institute for physical planning and construction research.

"An Foras Forbartha was abolished in 1988 and we were left in limbo until the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was set up in 1993," he explained.

He then took up a new role as an environmental and enforcement inspector with the EPA. While this position was based out of Castlebar, John maintained an office in the council building in Athlone, where he would get to know the local councillors over the years.

He retired from the EPA eighteen months ago, and is now self-employed as an environmental performance assessor.

An active interest in politics has been a constant throughout his life.

"As a friend of mine said many years ago when I started to line up with Boxer, 'you were raised on a good diet of Fianna Fáil - how did you end up here?!'

"My family would have been Sligo-Leitrim Fianna Fáil supporters, and I was a Fianna Fáil Cumann secretary up there for a good while, with (former Government Minister) Ray McSharry and company. That's where I learned the trade, so to speak!"

He maintained his involvement with Fianna Fáil in the North West for years after he had moved to Athlone, only stepping away from it and joining forces with 'Boxer' Moran when the then-councillor left the party to become an Independent at the beginning of 2011.

"When Boxer went out on his own, I had a young enough family myself at the time, and I hadn't the time to spend tearing around Sligo-Leitrim!"

John is married to Celine. Their five children, David, Claire, Brendan, Michelle and Shane, "are all adults now and getting on with their own lives".

The possibility of becoming a councillor had been mentioned to him in previous years, though work commitments meant he couldn't entertain it at that stage.

But the idea was raised again after Boxer romped home as the poll-topper at last June's local elections and set his sights on a Dáil return.

"When we were planning for the local elections, (Boxer said) if he made it back to the Dáil he was going to offer me the position. He didn't release my name, but we talked about it.

"The local elections obviously went well, and a few people then expressed an interest to him about looking for the nomination for co-option to the council.

"He said to them, 'There's a man on the scene and, unless he says no, I can't do anything else!' So that's the way he did it up until the day of the general election count, when he announced my name."

Now that he is a councillor, John said the experience gained over the years from working in the public sector should be an advantage.

"I would know the rules of engagement, so to speak, for the public sector. That should be a help in terms of getting people's concerns in and getting them raised."

He has also been involved in community issues locally, mentioning for example that he had noticed there was no AED defibrillator for public use in the Garnafailagh area, and decided to rectify that.

"We have one put in now at the St Hilda's respite facility, beside Boxer's house. Myself and Midlands Stone purchased it and put it there, and it's there for public use, with 24/7 access."

When asked about his priorities in his new role, he said his work over the years had made him acutely conscious of issues such as littering and environmental quality.

"The environment area in general is obviously an area that I'd have an interest in: the lake and the status of Lough Ree, a good environment for people to live in, with clean air and clean water. It is possible to have it.

"The Main Drainage Scheme is going on at the moment. It's a big job, with a lot of disruption, but it's a huge benefit to the town. There is a move towards city status for Athlone, and I see that as a great opportunity.

"Nobody knows when that will happen, but to be part of it or to support that move toward the development of the town, are things that I would be looking at," he concluded.