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Kilkenny County Council is without a single Independent councillor as of this week, following the decision of Councillor Pat Crowley, previously the only Independent, to join the ranks of Fine Gael.

Mairéad McGuinness, MEP for Kilkenny and Ireland East, announced earlier this week that she will seek the Fine Gael nomination to run for presidential office.

Bonniconlon man John O’Hara was formally ratified as a member of Mayo County Council on Monday morning when his co-option to the council to fill the seat left vacant by Dep Michelle Mulherin’s election to the Dáil was passed in the chamber. O’Hara, who has been one of the leading organisers of the Bonniconlon Agricultural Show for the past decade, was proposed by Cllr Joe Mellett and seconded by Cllr Eddie Staunton.

Now that the main event has been done and dusted the small matter of the Senate elections is now gathering momentum as local candidates are chosen to run for office.

THE worst kept secret in local politics was confirmed on Wednesday afternoon when Kilkenny TD Phil Hogan landed the plum job of Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government.

Mayo should have at least one junior minister in the make-up of the next government given the continued success of Michael Ring since first being elected to Dáil Éireann in a by-election in 1994.

Fresh from celebrating the election of Michelle Mulherin to the Dáil the members of the Ballina district of the Fine Gael party will have to get voting again very soon. Because of her election, the party now has vacancies to fill on both Mayo County Council and Ballina Town Council. Ordinarily a vacant seat is filled by co-opting a Fine Gael candidate who missed out on getting elected to the county council last time. However the Fine Gael vote managment in the 2009 local elections was so good that all their candidates in the Ballina electoral area were elected to the county council.

While Enda Kenny swept the boards across the county as Fine Gael surged to picking up four seats in Mayo, there was also a shift in the power base of TDs in the county last weekend. For the first time in a number of years, Ballina has the largest number of TDs in the county. The election of both Fine Gael’s Michelle Mulherin and the return of Fianna Fáil’s Dara Calleary has seen Ballina overtake Castlebar in the number of TDs.

All eyes will be on Castlebar this weekend and specifically the election count centre at the Royal Theatre where local man Enda Kenny is set to make history.

The members of Ballina Town Council adjourned their monthly meeting this week until next Wednesday as a mark of respect to former councillor Jimmy Sheridan who passed away recently.