Labour’s future in jeopardy as second TD quits
Sherlock reveals he will not run again
THE Labour Party is facing a battle for its future in national politics after a second senior TD announced he will not contest the next election.
Long-serving Cork East TD Seán Sherlock, 50, announced yesterday he will not run again following boundary changes around his native Mallow.
It comes days after Wexford TD and former Labour leader Brendan Howlin announced his decision to retire from politics at the end of the current Dáil term.
Two of the seven sitting Labour TDs have now announced they will not seek re-election.
After entering coalition with Fine Gael in 2011, Labour went from 37 seats to just seven at the 2016 election.
An Irish Times/Ipsos poll last month showed that support for the party had fallen by one percentage point to 3%.
However, Mr Sherlock said he began reconsidering his future in politics last month in the wake of the Electoral Commission’s constituency review, which saw his hometown and political base of Mallow moved from Cork East to Cork North Central.
The boundary change saw 14,400 people in Mallow and surrounding areas shift to the new fiveseater Cork North Central – leaving a large number of Mr Sherlock’s supporters unable to vote for him. The TD said the ‘difficult decision’ was made with a ‘heavy heart’ and explained there was no way for him to switch constituencies in line with the changes, as he would effectively be running as a ‘stranger’ to many voters. He said it would be ‘wrong of me’ to pretend the decision from the Electoral Commission didn’t influence his decision, adding that the impact on Mallow and Cork East was ‘profound’. He continued: ‘The scale of that change is so extensive that it caused me to reflect on my own political future.’ Mr Sherlock began his political career in 2003, when he served as a town councillor for Mallow. He was eventually elected to the Dáil in 2007, and later served as a junior minister in three departments during the Fine Gael-Labour government between 2011 and 2016. He has held on to his seat despite Labour’s significant decline.
Labour leader Ivana Bacik has not seen any major change to the four-seat Dublin Bay South constituency, where she scraped in, without reaching the quota, in the 2021 by-election.
Having only taken over as leader in 2022, she will be tested in the next general election, with Greens leader Eamon Ryan also trying to maintain the left vote in the area, and amid growing support for Sinn Féin, which could run a partner with Chris Andrews.
Mr Howlin is leaving the seat he maintained since 1989 open, but a gain there for a new candidate would be an uphill task with the party struggling in the polls.
However, Labour has a strong succession plan involving councillor George Lawlor, who has served as Mr Howlin’s constituency secretary. Aodhán Ó Ríordáin and Ged Nash’s constituencies remained five-seaters in the redraw, but they have still lost chunks of voters to neighbouring areas which could eat into their support and leave them increasingly vulnerable.
Former party leader Alan Kelly is rumoured to be considering his own future in Leinster House as his home area of Nenagh has returned to a three-seater Tipperary North constituency.
Fellow Labour TD Duncan Smith saw his five-seat Dublin Fingal constituency split in two, allowing for a three-seater in his local area of Swords, with Sinn Féin’s Louise O’Reilly potentially having a running mate to eat into any potential Labour vote.
‘The scale of change is so extensive’