Activist was well-known for anti-drugs activities

TOM HANLON secured a 14% share of first preferences and the second seat on Passage West town council with his 243 votes in the 1999 local elections.

However, on the same day six years ago, he failed to be elected to Cork County Council in the Carrigaline electoral area.

Mr Hanlon, listed in election literature as a painting contractor, has also been an anti-drug activist. With an address at St Joseph’s Terrace, Rockenham, Passage West, he did not stand for re-election last summer.

He had contested the last general election in 2002, in Enterprise Minister Micheál Martin’s Cork South Central constituency. He won just over 2,000 votes but, with less than 4% of the total poll, was eliminated after the fourth count.

However, the 37-year-old was supported by Sinn Féin chief negotiator Martin McGuinness.

Figures submitted by his election agent to the Standards in Public Office Commission show that €10,465.62 was spent on his general election campaign. But because he had reached a quarter of the quota needed to win a seat, he was entitled to the maximum reimbursement of €6,348.69 from the Department of Finance.

The former councillor was also a prominent member of the Coalition of Communities Against Drugs (COCAD) group, which was extremely active around Cork in the late 1990s.

After deciding not to seek election in Passage West last year, he acted as election agent for Sinn Féin’s European Parliament candidate, David Cullinane, at the June 2004 election in the Ireland South constituency.

The Waterford native fared well but his 32,643 first preference votes were not enough to secure one of the three seats.

Mr Hanlon is a neighbour of Sean Kind, who was sentenced to six years after a trial at the Special Criminal Court in October 2002 for possessing firearms in Mitchelstown, Co Cork.

The former elected representative attended part of the case heard in Dublin, involving Kind and three co-accused from Cork. All four were convicted of having three pistols and 18 rounds of ammunition without a firearms certificate and having the items for an unlawful purpose.

Kind was also an active member of Coalition of Communities Against Drugs (COCAD) in the late 1990s and was very active in Sinn Féin in the Carrigaline area near Passage West, the Special Criminal Court heard in 2002.

He was previously sentenced to seven years in 1980 for possession of firearms with intent to endanger life, after being arrested at an IRA training camp in Kerry.