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Tag Archives: 2009 Irish Local Elections


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Birth of Mannix Flynn, Politician, Author & Playwright

Gerard Mannix Flynn, an Irish Independent politician, author and playwright, is born in Dublin on May 4, 1957. He is serving as a Dublin City Councillor since May 2009. In addition to his work on Dublin City Council, he has also written the novel Nothing To Say in 1983 and the play James X in 2002.

At the age of eleven, Flynn is sent to St. Joseph’s Industrial School in Letterfrack, County Galway, for eighteen months. He is subjected to sexual and physical abuse there. He also spends time in Marlborough House Detention Centre, Daingean, County Offaly, St. Patrick’s Institution, Dublin, and is given five years at the age of fifteen and sent to Mountjoy Prison.

Flynn publishes the novel Nothing To Say in 1983. It is subsequently translated into German, Italian, and Polish. He founds his arts company, Farcry Productions, in 2004, which produces visual art, performance and installation work around taboo issues such as child sexual abuse, violence, and addiction.

In 2004, James X performed by Flynn wins The Irish Times Irish Theatre Award. An earlier version of this play entitled Talking to the Wall previously wins the Edinburgh Fringe award.

Flynn appears in the films Cal, When the Sky Falls and Excalibur and works as an actor in Scotland, London, Austria, and Dublin for twenty years.

Flynn is first elected to Dublin City Council in the 2009 Irish local elections as an independent candidate representing the South-East Inner City electoral area. He is re-elected to the revised Pembroke-South Dock electoral area in the 2014 Irish local elections.

Flynn tables a motion to move the Temple Bar Cultural Trust, a State company set up in 1991 as a regeneration agency for Temple Bar, under the direct control of Dublin City Council. The trust is subsequently found to be in breach of corporate governance and accountability in a number of public reports. He also expresses critical views of the way public money is spent as part of a Grafton Street regeneration project in Dublin.

Flynn supports tougher regulation around the amplification of busking on public streets, which leads to his office being vandalised in February 2015. He is involved in a number of challenges to cycle lane provision, with a High Court challenge against the Strand Road cycle lane COVID-19 mobility trial and is a spokesperson for a group opposed to this cycle lane trial. Critics accuse him of consistently voting against policies that would provide more active travel infrastructure and in favour of policies which negatively impact pedestrians and cyclists. His legal challenges to cycling provision have the potential to revert a number of cycle lanes which have been created back to servicing predominantly cars.

In 2015, Flynn resigns from the Dublin City Council Arts SPC over what he perceives as a lack of cohesive overall policy, strategy, and vision.

In 2016, Flynn protests against the Artane Band, due to its association with the Artane Industrial School. The band responds saying it has had no association with the former industrial school. His peaceful protest, which includes him protesting on a window sill in his Dublin City Council office, is criticised by some as “attention seeking” and a “publicity stunt full stop.”

In 2019, Flynn is involved in a protest march against plans to open the state’s largest homeless shelter in his ward. Protesters march northbound on Aungier Street blocking traffic and shouting slogans against the Peter McVerry trust for providing the services in conjunction with Dublin City Council. In 2020, he takes further legal action against the council, who are working in conjunction with the Peter McVerry Trust, so that he can ensure the homeless facilities will not be built in the area.

Flynn contests the 2011, 2016 and 2020 Irish general elections to Dáil Éireann unsuccessfully. He stands unsuccessfully as an independent candidate at the 2021 Dublin Bay South by-election, getting 879 first-preference votes (3.3%).

A 2019 documentary by Flynn, Land Without God, about the effects of clerical abuse on Flynn and his family, receives special mention for the Dublin Human Rights Film Award at the Dublin International Film Festival.


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Birth of Thomas Pringle, Irish Independent Politician

Thomas Pringle, an Irish independent politician who has been a Teachta Dála (TD) for the Donegal constituency since the 2016 Irish general election, is born into an Irish Republican family in Dublin on August 30, 1967. From 2011 to 2016 he is the TD for the Donegal South-West constituency.

Pringle’s father, Peter, is a supporter of the Irish Republican Socialist Party (IRSP) and is convicted of the killing of two members of the Gardaí in 1980, a conviction that is subsequently declared as unsafe, although it has not been certified as a miscarriage of justice. Pringle is a patron of the People’s Movement, which campaigns against the Treaty of Lisbon. He is previously a member of Donegal County Council, where he manages a water treatment plant and is a shop steward, having been elected as an independent member in the 1999 Irish local elections, and then as a Sinn Féin candidate in the 2004 Irish local elections. He leaves Sinn Féin in 2007 and retains his seat as an independent in the 2009 Irish local elections.

Pringle is elected as a TD for the Donegal South-West constituency at the 2011 Irish general election, unseating the incumbent Tánaiste Mary Coughlan. He quickly becomes an ally of Luke ‘Ming’ Flanagan, elected as an independent TD at the same time as Pringle, but for the Roscommon–South Leitrim constituency. Flanagan and Pringle go on to support each other on many issues, including reform of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and opposition to the Mercosur deal. Even when Flanagan is elected as a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for the Midlands–North-West constituency after spending three years in the Dáil, he and Pringle continue to work together, and Flanagan visits Donegal to canvass for Pringle ahead of the 2020 Irish general election.

On December 5, 2011, Pringle delivers a televised address to the nation, representing the technical group of TDs in Dáil Éireann. He does so in response to Taoiseach Enda Kenny‘s address to the nation of the previous evening. Later that month, he calls on people for support in a campaign not to pay a new household charge brought in as part of the latest austerity budget and announces that he will not register for the tax or pay it.

In February 2012, Pringle publishes his expenses online. He is elected leader of the technical group in Dáil Éireann in March 2012.

In May 2012, Pringle brings an unsuccessful High Court challenge over the 2012 European Fiscal Compact referendum and the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) Treaty which is appealed to the Supreme Court in July 2012. In July 2012, the Irish Supreme Court decides to refer three questions to the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) arising out of his challenge of the European Stability Mechanism Treaty and doubts about the ESM’s legality under the Treaties of the European Union. The CJEU holds an oral hearing on the referral on October 23, 2012. It is the first time that the full court sits to hear a reference from a member state of the Union. The 27 judges hear oral arguments from the counsel for Pringle, Ireland, nine other member states, the Commission, the Council, and the European Parliament. On November 27, 2012, the EU Court of Justice dismisses Pringle’s arguments and rules that the ESM is in accordance with the Treaties.

In the 2016 Irish general election, after a re-drawing of constituency boundaries, Pringle campaigns in the new five-seater Donegal constituency. He is re-elected to the final seat by a margin of just 184 votes over Sinn Féin’s Pádraig Mac Lochlainn. During negotiations to form a government, Pringle says he is glad not to have signed up to the Independent Alliance, after that group enters talks with Taoiseach Enda Kenny. He says that unless Kenny or Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin sign up to Right2Change, he will not support either as Taoiseach.

As of April 2016, Pringle had become a member of the Independents 4 Change technical group in the Dáil.

In May 2016, Pringle introduces legislation designed to retain water in public ownership and avoid further privatisation.

Pringle puts forward a bill calling on the government to end public spending from fossil fuels, which passes, making Ireland the first country to fully divest public money from fossil fuels. In June 2022, he puts forward a bill proposing a referendum on lowering the voting age to sixteen.

Pringle is married and has three children.


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Maurice Ahern is Elected Lord Mayor of Dublin

Maurice Ahern, Fianna Fáil politician and brother of Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, is elected Lord Mayor of Dublin on July 3, 2000. Fine Gael’s P. J. Hourican, a native of County Longford, is elected Lord Mayor of Cork.

Ahern is born in Dublin in 1938. He is a member of Dublin City Council for the Cabra–Glasnevin local electoral area from 1999 to 2009. He is first elected at the 1999 Irish local elections, topping the poll. He is re-elected at the 2004 Irish local elections. Prior to his election as the Lord Mayor of Dublin in 2000, he is the former Leader of the Fianna Fáil group on the council. He is a member of the Irish Sports Council.

Ahern is married to Moira Murray, and they have five sons and one daughter. His eldest son, Dylan Ahern, is found dead in his apartment on November 22, 2009.

Ahern is the elder brother of Bertie and Noel Ahern, both of whom serve as Fianna Fáil TDs, with Bertie serving as Taoiseach from 1997 to 2008.

Ahern is the Fianna Fáil candidate in the Dublin Central by-election which is held on June 5, 2009. He loses that election being beaten into 5th place. On the same day, he also loses his council seat in the 2009 Irish local elections.


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Birth of Séamus Healy, Politician

Séamus Healy, former Irish Independent politician, is born in Waterford, County Waterford, on August 9, 1950. He has been a Teachta Dála (TD) for Tipperary since the 2016 Irish general election. He previously served as TD for Tipperary South from 2000 to 2007 and 2011 to 2016.

Healy is part of the Clonmel-based Workers and Unemployed Action (WUA) group which has a number of local representatives on South Tipperary County Council and Clonmel Borough Council. He is a former member of the League for a Workers’ Republic.

A former hospital administrator, Healy is first elected to Clonmel Borough Council in the 1985 Irish local elections. He is elected to the 28th Dáil at a by-election on June 22, 2000. He is re-elected at the 2002 Irish general election, but loses his seat at the 2007 Irish general election to Martin Mansergh of Fianna Fáil. After losing his Dáil seat he returns to serve as South Tipperary County councillor for the Clonmel local electoral area, being co-opted for Pat English, after which he is appointed to various committees such as the local Vocational Education Committee (VEC), promotion of the Irish language and various water supply committees.

Healy’s brother, Paddy Healy, serves as president of the Teachers’ Union of Ireland and runs unsuccessfully in the Seanad elections in 2007 and 2011 on the NUI panel, and in the 1980s runs in the Dublin North–East constituency as an Anti H-Block candidate.

Healy is re-elected to South Tipperary County Council at the 2009 Irish local elections. He wins back Tipperary South seat at the 2011 Irish general election with 21.3% of the first preference vote. On December 15, 2011, he helps launch a nationwide campaign against the household charge being brought in as part of the 2012 Irish budget.

Healy stands for re-election to the new Tipperary constituency as a non-party candidate in the 2016 Irish general election, and is elected on the seventh count. However, he is entered into the register of the 32nd Dáil as a Workers and Unemployed Action TD once again. He votes for both Gerry Adams and Richard Boyd Barrett for Taoiseach when the 32nd Dáil first convenes on March 10, 2016.