Electoral boundary changes will affect Charleville strongly

THE electoral boundary changes announced last week will see Charleville reverting to its more natural geographic area of Mallow and Kanturk in Cork North West, rather than the Fermoy Municipal Area, which it was under after the last Cork County Council election in 2015.

However, it also means that there will be five politicians chasing four seats in the Kanturk area as the Mallow area has been allocated five seats this time round.

Cllr Ian Doyle is the sitting Charleville councillor and he will find it exceedingly difficult to be re-elected as Charleville is on the periphery of the constituency and will always find it difficult to have a resident councillor representing the town and area on the council.

He will be up against fellow Fianna Fail councillor Bernard Moynihan, along with Gerard Murphy, Fine Gael; Timmy Collins Independent and John Paul O’Shea, the former independent councillor who will be running for Fine Gael next time out.

These are all very popular and hard-working councillors, as is Doyle, the only Charleville born native presently on the council, and it will take an exceptional campaign to unseat one of them.

Since he was elected in 2015 he has been a hard working Councillor ensuring that Charleville gets its fair share of what it is entitled to, thus demonstrating the advantage of having a local delegate in the chamber, and it would be a travesty if Charleville were to lose representation in the council chamber after the next local election in May 2019.