Familiar faces rule the roost in Athlone council election

When the newly-elected members of the Athlone Moate Municipal District walk into the council chamber in the coming weeks, none of them will be unfamiliar with their surroundings.

All five have all served as councillors in the Athlone area before, and all for a number of terms each.

This was not, therefore, a 'change' election in Athlone, with the electorate as a whole showing a preference for the familiar face, the experienced public representative who had been there and done it previously.

One thing that did change was that the Athlone area lost its sole female councillor, the Green Party's Louise Heavin.

In the previous council term, Ailish McManus, now the principal of St Mary's National School in Athlone, had been the sole female on the council in Athlone. Ms McManus was co-opted onto the local authority in 2016, but opted not to stand for election in 2019.

The need to encourage more women, and more younger candidates, to consider getting involved in local politics was a talking point among some of those in attendance at the count centres in Athlone and Moate

The turnout in Athlone this time around was 46.6%, which was up marginally on the last local election in 2019, when it was 45.2%, but it still lagged behind the turnout in the more rural Moate area (56.4%).

One of the challenges in writing about this election race in Athlone is trying not to repeat the same superlatives when describing the size of 'Boxer' Moran's vote.

But the simplest way of putting is that four out of every ten valid votes cast in the Athlone area had a number '1' in Boxer's corner.

It was a truly remarkable performance and, with the dust still settling, it's difficult to see it being bettered in the future by any other candidate in a local election race in Athlone.

The sheer size of Boxer's vote dilutes the value of any number-crunching analysis of how the political parties fared in the Athlone area this time around.

But, for the record, Fianna Fáil retained its status as the biggest party in the electoral area, with 26.1% of the first preference votes in the valid poll, down from 33.9% last time.

Fine Gael had a good election nationally but less so in Athlone, where it took 14.7% of the first preferences.

The other parties' vote shares in the Athlone area were as follows: Sinn Féin (4.6%), Greens (3.8%), Independent Ireland (3.2%), Irish Freedom Party (2.9%), and Labour (1.6%).

The 'Boxer' wave, coupled with a good showing by Tom Cleary, meant Independents took some 43% of all of the first preferences in the Athlone area.