Constituency profile: Limerick City

The Limerick City four-seat constituency bristles with big name candidates.

Ministers Michael Noonan (FG) and Jan O’Sullivan (Labour), along with Willie O’Dea (FF) are three of the outgoing deputies. The fourth incumbent, Kieran O’Donnell (FG), has built a high profile due to his contributions at the banking inquiry.

While their names capture reams of newspaper column inches and much TV and radio airtime, shrewd local observers are keeping a close eye on a relative newcomer, Cian Prendiville of the Anti-Austerity Alliance.

The pundits predict Noonan, O’Dea, and O’Donnell should come home in that order and the final seat will be a battle between O’Sullivan (Lab) and Maurice Quinlivan (SF).

The received wisdom is that Prendiville’s transfers will, at the end of the day, swing the pendulum between O’Sullivan and Quinlivan.

But Prendiville, a 26-year-old politics and sociology graduate of the University of Limerick, dismisses these predictions, insisting that O’Donnell and O’Sullivan are both under threat from Sinn Féin and AAA, given the change in public mood.

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Prendiville, who won a seat on Limerick City and County Council in the 2014 local elections, says: “The scale of the change happening out there in political attitudes is being totally underestimated. I believe that with the current polls on attitudes, Fine Gael and Labour (O’Donnell and Sullivan) could lose seats in Limerick City. AAA and Sinn Féin could take the final two seats.

“There is a big anti-government move and Limerick had some of the biggest anti-water charges protests in the country and that momentum has continued into this election.

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“That would be a real political revolution and shake-up in politics in Limerick. I am in no doubt that I will get more first preferences than O’Sullivan. Labour has lost many of the old Labour strongholds, including Garryowen and Thomondgate and there is a swing to AAA.

“We are also getting a lot of former Willie O’Dea voters who want to see real change and not just potholes being filled. From what we hear on the doorstep, the possibility of the same four outgoing TDs being re-elected is out.”

He said many old Labour voters seeking change will not move to Sinn Féin.

“They won’t go to Sinn Féin as Jim Kemmy never had much truck with Sinn Féin,” he said.

Prendiville said AAA has a good platform for this election with three of the 21 seats on the Metropolitan District of Limerick City and County Council.

Prendiville describes himself as a “fed up” rather than “an angry” young man.

He said: “Young people are fed up with unemployment, fed up with low-pay jobs, fed up with emigration, fed up with not being able to afford getting a mortgage to buy their own home, fed up with not being able to get a local authority house.”

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