Social Democrats leader Holly Cairns is celebrating a strong set of local elections for her party.
With Dublin Bay North TD Cian O’Callaghan serving as director of elections for the party, the Soc Dems became the 2nd-largest party on Dublin City Council.
The party won 10 seats on Dublin City Council, topped the poll in Howth-Malahide, and looks to either hold onto or expand on the 2 seats they hold on South Dublin County Council.
“To put the party’s performance into perspective, we won 19 seats across the entire country in 2019 and are now on course to have 15 councillors in Dublin alone – with a number of our other candidates in Dublin narrowly missing out on seats,” Cairns said.
“The party’s hugely impressive performance is even more notable given our low level of incumbent candidates and the very large proportion of first-time candidates we ran in this election.”
To Cairns’ point, some of the Soc Dems’ greatest victories came in Kimmage-Rathmines with first-time candidate Eoin Hayes winning a seat for the party as well as Cian Farrell winning for the party in South-East Inner City.
Jen Cummins, who narrowly missed out on a seat in 2019, won in South-West Inner City, and the party won 2 seats in Artane-Whitehall, filling the gap left by Patricia Roe.
Aishling Silke and Jesslyn Henry won for the party in the 6-seater.
Cairns hailed the election performance as “outstanding”, saying “the party’s inclusive and positive message resonated with people at the doors.”
“I would like to take this opportunity to pay tribute to our candidates, all of whom worked so hard throughout this campaign.
“These election results demonstrate the growing level of support across the country for the Social Democrats; the high calibre of our candidates; and mean we are well placed to fight the general election when it comes.”