MEET THE CANDIDATES: New faces to be welcomed in Trim

JOHN DONOHOE
The Trim Municipal Area covers a wide stretch of south Meath, from the outskirts of Navan right down to Castlejordan, a foot of the county jutting into Westmeath and Kildare and touching Offaly.
Largely rural, it is headquartered in the ancient capital of the Royal County, Trim town, and like the three urban areas in the last local elections, the electoral map had changed since the previous vote, due to the abolition of the town councils and their amalgamation into the local municipal areas.

This meant that councillors who were sitting on town councils were now competing with county councillors - if they didn’t have a dual mandate.
Last time out, there were 13 candidates for the six-seater; this year, here are 11 vying for the six seats in the Trim area.
In 2014, Sinn Fein’s Caroline Lynch topped the poll, elected on the first count with over 200 votes to spare, while Fine Gael enjoyed success with Joe Fox, who had been previously co-opted to fill Deputy Ray Butler’s seat, was the first Fine Gael candidate elected of three – Noel French, who had filled Butler’s town council seat, and Enda Flynn, an Enfield school teacher.

Also elected were two more former town councillors – Independent Trevor Golden, and Fianna Fail’s Ronan McKenna.
Two of these sitting councillors are now departing the political scene – Flynn in Enfield, and McKenna in Trim.
This makes Trim a very interesting spot for election watchers, as it provides for any possibility being thrown up in the results.
Fianna Fail has a ticket of three women – McKenna’s sister-in-law, Aisling Dempsey, Vera Kelly of Enfield, and General Election candidate, Sinead Geraghty of Kinnegad, while Niamh Souhan is running for Fine Gael in the Enfield area.

Dempsey has political pedigree as the daughter of former minister, Noel, while Vera Kelly was within just seven votes of Enda Flynn in 2014. Sinead Geraghty, like her namesake in Ratoath, will have to put in a decent performance to justify her place on the national ticket, but will be up against it those two strong candidates.
Enfield is a place that many candidates are focusing on - Des Doran, the Aontu candidate, brought his party leader, Peadar Toibin, to the village, and highlighted issues such as childcare, public housing and public transport shortfalls – problems that are not unusual across the county as a whole.
Vera Kelly was ahead of Ronan McKenna up until the eight count the last time, but he want ahead with the help of the elimated Vincent McHugh, his FF colleague on Trim Town Council, and Labour man, James O’Shea, also a Trim townie.
Former Labour councillor, Tracy McElhinney, is also running again, but it will be hard to see Labour recovering from the meltdown it suffered in the last locals, when three sitting county councillors and three outgoing town councillors failed to be elected.

Joe Fox, a Ballivor native living in Summerhill, has a wide area to dip into for support, while a candidate to watch is the Social Democrats’ Ronan Moore from Trim, who has been building up a strong presence both for himself and the party over recent election campaigns, and is their general election candidate in Meath West.
All politics is local, the former Speaker of the US House of Representatives, Tip O’Neill, famously said. The question in the Trim Municipal Area will be – how local? Often, voters will cross party lines to vote for local candidates, rather than vote 1,2,3, down a party line. With the majority of sitting candidates surely safe, it will be down to the boiling points of Trim and Enfield to decide who fills the vacancies.

(Clockwise from top) Noel French, Vera Kelly, Ronan Moore, Tracy McElhinney, Trevor Golden.