Local elections: Everything you need to know about the Cork City South East constituency
With an electorate of just over 32,000 and a turnout in 2019 of almost 50% it's the highest turnout of all five of the city's LEAs. Picture: Howard Crowdy
- Lorna Bogue, Rabharta
- Des Cahill, FG
- Michelle Cowhey-Shahid, SF
- Mary Rose Desmond, FF
- Susan Doyle, Soc Dems
- Tony Field, non party
- Deirdre Forde, FG
- Peter Horgan, Labour
- Rachel Hurley Roche, The Workers' Party
- Honore Kamengi, Green
- Kieran McCarthy, non-party
- Barry O’Brien, FG
- Chris O’Leary, SF
- Michael O’Riordan, The Irish People's Party
- Terry Shannon, FF
- Shannon Wright, non-party
: 45,400
Six
7,566
Des Cahill (FG), Lorna Bogue (An Rabharta Glas), Mary Rose Desmond (FF), Kieran McCarthy (Ind), Terry Shannon (FF), Deirde Forde (FG)
All six sitting councillors in this large suburban local electoral area (LEA), with a population of just over 45,000, are seeking re-election where Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael won two seats each in 2019, with an Independent — the outgoing Lord Mayor — and a then Green Party candidate taking the other two seats.
With an electorate of just over 32,000 and a turnout in 2019 of almost 50%, the highest turnout of all five of the city's LEAs, Fine Gael’s party leader on Cork City Council Des Cahill topped the poll at the last local election.
The two Fianna Fáil candidates, Terry Shannon and Mary Rose Desmond, performed strongly, with a combined 25.84% of the first-preference vote, followed closely by the two Fine Gael candidates, Mr Cahill and Deirdre Forde, who accounted for almost 24.5% of the vote.
This LEA also has the highest female representation of any of the city’s five LEAs, with half of the seats held by women.
One of them, Lorna Bogue, who ran as a Green Party candidate in 2019 and won the second seat with just shy of 14% of the first-preference vote, resigned from the party in October 2020 after a falling out with its leadership over a range of policies, and joined Rabharta Glas, the Green left, which has since registered itself as Rabharta, the party for workers and carers.
That registration came too late, however, for candidates to include it on their election literature so Ms Bogue will appear on posters and election literature as a non-party candidate. She is also running in the European elections in Ireland South.
She says she has a working arrangement with another candidate, Rachel Hurley Roche, so it remains to be seen if her ‘green’ vote will stay with her on June 7.
Sixteen candidates have declared to run in this LEA, including all six sitting councillors, one of whom is the outgoing lord mayor, so competition will be intense.
The field also includes a former city councillor and lord mayor who lost his seat in 2019, and a minority far-right Irish People Party candidate who gives his home address as on the northside.
The LEA stretches from the Marina in the north to Moneygourney in the south, and from Victoria Road and the city’s south docklands in the west, to Mahon and the Jack Lynch Tunnel in the east.
Cork’s busiest road, the N40 South Ring Road, runs east to west right through the middle, with the suburbs of Ballintemple, Ballinlough, Blackrock and Mahon, to the north, and Douglas, Maryborough, Rochestown to the south.
Another key road, the N28, runs north-south through the bottom half of the LEA, from the Bloomfield interchange towards the northern outskirts of Carrigaline, with the LEA’s eastern boundary near Passage West.
On the city side, the south docklands are earmarked for major housing development, with work already under way on a massive apartment scheme on the former Live at the Marquee site. Work should start on several more over the lifetime of the next council to help the city meet ambitious population targets.
The LEA is home to Páirc Uí Chaoimh, which hosts big games and concerts, but which most agree needs better traffic management and public transport arrangements for big events, the Marina promenade, which is undergoing a major revamp, and Marina Park, where work is ongoing to develop a major eco-park.
It is home too to the Marina Market and the Black Market — both of which are now firm city destinations.
Millions has been spent, and millions more is earmarked for active travel infrastructure, with work ongoing on the development of the Blackrock to Passage greenway, and on Cork’s first neighbourhood bike scheme in Mahon.
The LEA is home to Mahon Point shopping centre and the nearby business parks, all of which are major employment hubs and generators of huge volumes of traffic.
The Dunkettle Interchange has been upgraded, but tailbacks on the N40 are still an issue at peak times, with traffic chaos ensuing in the event of a crash at any point along the N40, leading to traffic impacts city-wide.
The N28 is being upgraded to motorway status — work which should be largely complete during the lifetime of the next council.
Several new housing estates and large new schools are planned in the southern area of the LEA.
And while there are major plans for various strategic transport corridors (STCs) as part of Cork BusConnects, traders in Douglas, a notorious traffic blackspot, are opposed to elements of the routes in and through the village.
A contentious road plan over the Mangala woodland in Douglas is also set to be a contentious issue over the lifetime of the next council.
So with traffic, public transport and housing already major day-to-day issues here, they are set to become even bigger issues over the lifetime of the next council.
There was very little between the first four past the post in 2019, with Mr Cahill topping the poll, and reaching the quota on the first count with 20 votes to spare, taking 14.42% of the first-preference vote.
Ms Bogue took the second seat with 13.99%, followed by former county councillor, Fianna Fáil’s Mary Rose Desmond, who stood for the first time in the city in 2019 following the city boundary extension, taking 13.32% of the first-preference vote, with her veteran party colleague, Terry Shannon, taking the fourth seat with 12.52%.
Independent councillor Kieran McCarthy (10.8%) and Fine Gael’s Deirdre Forde (10.06%) took the last two seats. Ms Forde was lord mayor from June ’22 to the middle of 2023, followed by Mr McCarthy over the last 12 months, which means he goes into this election with a high profile off the back of his year in office.
There is a strong field of challengers this year, including former Sinn Féin councillor and former lord mayor, Chris O’Leary, who lost his seat in 2019 despite his impressive handling of the politically tense city boundary extension process in the years running up to the last local elections.
He polled just under 7% of the first-preference vote and lost out on the last seat to Ms Forde by just over 400 votes.
The Mahon-based candidate has been very vocal in his criticism in recent months of the rollout of Cork’s first neighbourhood bike scheme in the suburb — a significant investment in new bike lanes, footpaths and bus shelters.
But after some initial concerns, the work is continuing without issue and there is a sense locally that he may have picked the wrong issue.
His running mate is Douglas-based Michelle Cowhey Shahid.
This LEA elected two Sinn Féin councillors in 2014 but if a week is a long time in politics, a decade is an eternity.
Labour’s Peter Horgan, from Maryborough, a parliamentary assistant to Labour TD Seán Sherlock, could be one to watch here.
He polled well in 2019 with just over 5.6% of the first-preference votes, finishing 484 votes behind Mr O’Leary.
He has been very outspoken for the last two years or so on a range of issues in the LEA, such as anti-social behaviour, planning, water quality, and BusConnects, but also on important city issues including the Cork event centre saga and the proposed light rail system, unearthing important information through Freedom of Information requests.
But he would need to double his vote to be in with a shout of a seat.
Completing the line-up here are Douglas-based Social Democrats candidate, Susan Doyle, a solicitor; Douglas-based non-party candidate Tony Field, a retired sales and marketing executive; the Green Party’s Honore Kamegni, who works with An Post; Fine Gael candidate Barry O’Brien, a recruitment consultant from Douglas; the Irish People’s Party candidate, Farranree-based Michael O’Riordan, who describes himself as “a house husband”; and Blackrock-based ‘home maker’, Shannon Wright, a non-party candidate.
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