Meet your new Southside TDs!

November 29 saw Dublin (and by extension, the rest of the country) elect 174 TDs to the Dáil.

A number of TDs that were elected on November 29 are first-time TDs.

With that in mind, here are the new batch of TDs that will be representing the Southside over the course of the 34th Dáil.

Dublin Mid-West:

First-time TD: Shane Moynihan (Fianna Fáil)

Returning TD: Paul Gogarty (Independent)

Dublin Mid-West elected five TDs, with three of them (Sinn Féin’s duo of Eoin Ó’Broin and Mark Ward and Fine Gael’s Emer Higgins) being incumbent TDs, while Moynihan and Gogarty are unique in their own ways.

Moynihan is a first-time TD, having previously fought the 2019 by-election in the seat (losing to Mark Ward on that occasion).

Moynihan winning back the seat for Fianna Fáil marks a major turnaround for the party, having not held the seat since 2007.

The party failed to get a TD elected in the 2011, 2016 and 2020 general elections before Moynihan ended the streak in 2024.

The Lucan man was first elected to South Dublin County Council in 2019 in the Palmerstown-Fonthill constituency and won re-election in June.

The returning TD in Dublin Mid-West should be a familiar face to any Irish political fan; that’s right, the man who went viral for his use of “unparliamentary language” in 2009 is back in the Dáil.

Paul Gogarty makes his return to the Dáil having been a Green TD for Dublin Mid-West between 2002 and 2011, and has since carved out a niche for himself as a prominent independent councillor from 2014 onwards.

Gogarty being re-elected as an independent the same day as his old Green party suffered a near electoral wipeout just adds to the fun factor.

Dublin South Central:

First-time TDs: Catherine Ardagh (Fianna Fáil) Maire Devine (Sinn Féin), Jen Cummins (Social Democrats)

Previewing this constituency was a nightmare, and waiting for this constituency to finish counting was similarly tortuous.

This was one of few seats where Sinn Féin managed to get more than one TD elected with veteran Aengus Ó Snodagh joined by former Senator Máire Devine.

Devine served as a member of Dublin City Council in various stints, and was in the Seanad between 2016 and 2020.

Sinn Féin’s share of the vote went from 39.3% in 2020 with one candidate, and 2024 saw three candidates amassing 31.3% of the vote between them; that’s the magic of Ireland’s electoral system at work.

Sinn Féin running three TDs in the seat surely played a factor in Joan Collins losing her seat and may have also been a factor in Catherine Ardagh winning a seat for Fianna Fáil.

2020 saw the constituency shut out Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael but Ardagh claimed a scalp from the left with her win.

A Senator since 2016, Ardagh managed to take advantage of a fractured ballot to win a seat for Fianna Fáil and put paid to the notion that Dublin South Central is a leftist hotbed.

The surprise win in the constituency was Social Democrats councillor Jen Cummins rising above the pack to take out Green TD Patrick Costello and win the party’s first-ever seat in the constituency.

First elected to Dublin City Council in June, Cummins’ win marked everything that went right for her party in this election.

Rising above Labour, the Greens and People Before Profit (councillor Hazel de Nortúin failed to hold onto Bríd Smith’s seat), Cummins managed to more than double the Soc Dems’ vote in the seat compared to 2020. How about that for some purple rain?

Dublin Bay South:

First-time TDs: James Geohegan (Fine Gael), Eoin Hayes (won election as a Social Democrats candidate, now an independent)

A belated coronation for Lord Mayor of Dublin James Geoghegan; his 2021 by-election loss to Labour leader Ivana Bacik now seems like distant history after he topped the poll.

Geoghegan managed to outpoll Bacik in a rematch of their summer 2021 showdown, but questions will be asked at the Fine Gael Christmas lunch as to why the party couldn’t win two seats here.

First elected to Dublin City Council in 2019, Geoghegan won re-election in June, topping the poll in Pembroke alongside Green councillor (and unsuccessful Green general election candidate) Hazel Chu.

The addition of former TD Kate O’Connell into the race as an independent ultimately proved fatal to Fine Gael’s hopes of winning two seats; don’t we love a bit of family drama around Christmas?

One of the stories of the election was Social Democrats councillor Eoin Hayes taking out Sinn Féin TD Chris Andrews for the final seat – only to have the victory tainted by the Palantir scandal and Hayes being suspended from the party for 6 months.

One normal day of Irish politics, that’s all I ask for. Will never happen!

Dublin South-West

First-time TDs: Ciáran Ahern

As we’ve discussed elsewhere in this week’s edition, Labour and the Social Democrats’ electoral success came at the expense of the Greens.

Case in point: Ciáran Ahern won back a constituency thought lost to Labour after the austerity years.

Green Noel Francis Duffy saw his 7.9% share in 2020 tumble down to 2.9% while Ahern improved on his 5.3% showing in 2020 to pick up 8.7% in 2024.

Ahern was only elected to South Dublin County Council for the first time in June and now finds himself as a TD.

Dublin Rathdown:

First-time TDs: Maeve O’Connell (Fine Gael) Shay Brennan (Fianna Fáil), Sinéad Gibney (Social Democrats)

A changing of the guard here, with councillor Maeve O’Connell, the son of a local Fianna Fáil titan and a high-profile Social Democrats candidate all taking a seat.

Legal eagle O’Connell was first elected to Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown Council in 2019, Brennan looked to make it third time lucky after a failed 2009 by-election bid and was the last man out in 2020 while Gibney looked to build on a decent performance in June’s European race.

O’Connell will join her husband Colm Brophy (Dublin South-West) in the Dáil, Brennan will follow in his father Seamus’ footsteps and Gibney claimed perhaps the biggest scalp of all the Southside election races by taking out prominent Green Catherine Martin.

Dún Laoghaire 

First-time TDs: Barry Ward (Fine Gael)

A three-term councillor on Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown Council, Ward made the leap to the Seanad in 2020.

While the party fell short in its bid to win two seats in Dublin Bay North, the brand was strong enough in Dún Laoghaire for Jennifer Carroll Macneill and Ward to be elected.

Green minister Ossian Smyth was another notable casualty of the day, and Ward was able to swoop in and pick up the seat at his expense.