Cllr Mc Gahon asked not to stand as candidate by Fine Gael party
CLLR MCGAHON DECLINES TO COMMENT ON REPORT ASKED NOT TO STAND
BELEAGUERED Fine Gael councillor John McGahon has declined to comment on media reports that he has been asked to stand down from the party’s general election ticket after he was arrested and questioned about an alleged assault.
According to an article in The Sunday Times, the 27 year old councillor was asked by the party’s general secretary Tom Curran to take his name off the Fine Gael ticket for the next general election.
The newspaper reported that the Dundalk councillor has refused to withdraw his name and Cllr McGahon declined to comment when contacted by The Argus.
Party officials were likewise tight-lipped with the Press Office saying that they had no comment to make on the issue.
According to The Sunday Times article, a supporter of Cllr McGahon’s said ‘ He’s a young man with a lot to offer and he wants to get on with it now. If they want to deselect him, they might end up in the courts. That didn’t go too well for them last time.’
However, it’s understood that at local level, senior party members are concerned about the publicity surrounding Cllr McGahon after he gave an interview to LMFM last month in which he admitted that he had been involved in a fight and that he had a long standing problem with alcohol.
In the course of the frank interview, he said that what happened was ‘ totally and utterly unacceptable’ and was the result of his ‘unhealthy relationship with alcohol’.
He said that if elected to the Dail, he intended to use his position to raise awareness about mental health issues among young people.
Cllr McGahon was elected to Louth County Council on his first attempt in 2014 when he was just 23 years of age and was elected Cathaoirleach of the Dundalk Municipal District for 2017/18.
He is a member of the McGahon dynasty that have dominated Fine Gael in Louth for generations. His father Johnny and grandfather Owen B served as councillors and his uncle Brendan was TD for Louth.
While his involvement in a disturbance outside a nightclub earlier this summer was widely known in Dundalk, Cllr McGahon received the party nomination at the Louth convention in September, defeating fellow Dundalk councillor Maria Doyle.
It’s likely that Cllr Doyle would receive the nomination should Cllr McGahon lose the nomination as the party would be conscious of needing a candidate which would appeal to Dundalk voters following the resignation of Deputy Peter Fitzpatrick.