YOUR GUIDE TO THE NINE CANDIDATES Cllr Malcolm Byrne Verona Murphy

ADDRESS: The Chase, Gorey OCCUPATION: Head of Communications, Higher Education Authority (HEA)

The graduate in law and arbitration from UCD is the favourite to take Mick Wallace’s vacant seat.

First elected to Gorey Town Council at the first count in 1999, at the age of 25, he topped the poll in Gorey in the 2004 local elections and was re-elected in 2009.

He was Gorey’s poll-topper in 2014 with 1,688 votes and was elected chairman of Wexford Co Council.

Byrne contested the 2016 General Election but lost out with an 8.5 per cent share of the first preference vote. In May of this year he stood for election on the double, contesting both the European Parliament and local elections. He failed to win a seat in Europe but performed beyond most observer’s expectations, with almost 70,000 first preference votes. He had a landslide victory in the reconfigured Gorey Municipal District election, topping the poll with over a quarter of the vote.

According to his FF profile, Malcolm Byrne is a long time campaigner for sustainable planning and development, youth participation in civic life, the arts, adequate policing for rural Ireland, support for equality and human rights as well as investment in education to underpin social and economic progress.

In an interview with this newspaper, the Fianna Fáil hopeful said that he never apologises for being ambitious:

ADDRESS: Ramsgrange, Co Wexford OCCUPATION: President of the Irish Road Haulage Association (IRHA). Managing Director, DruMur Transport

Very much a self-starter, the Fine Gael candidate comes from a family of eleven children. She left school at the age of 16, emigrating to the UK, but returned aged 18 and became involved in the haulage industry as a sole trader.

In 1992, she became a mother and retrained as a beautician and an electrologist while rearing her daughter at home in tandem with running her haulage business. Murphy went back to education to complete her Leaving Cert at the age of 35 and then moved on to study law, attaining a BA in Law from IT Carlow in 2010.

As well as fulfilling her role as President of the IRHA, she operates DruMur Transport Limited with partner and co-director Joe Druhan, specialising in refrigerated transport to and from Italy.

She says she threw her hat in the ring as an election candidate as she believes that ‘as a legislator I can make a difference on the ground in Wexford and nationally’.

In the run-up to the by-election she has become embroiled in controversy over comments linking migrants coming into Ireland to terror group ISIS in this newspaper and elsewhere.

In an interview in this newspaper, the Fine Gael candidate said: