Smaller parties aim to break FF/FG hold

COUNCIL PROFILE: Dun Laoghaire/Rathdown: Bringing down the ruling coalition is the great dream of the smaller parties in Dún Laoghaire/Rathdown. Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael have shared power in the council for as long as many people can remember, and the opposition would dearly love to end this cosy duopoly.Dún Laoghaire/Rathdown: 28 seats

Labour, in particular, nurses a grudge against an arrangement that has excluded the party from the council chair for almost 30 years.

The local election battle commences with the dust still settling on the County Development Plan for 2004-2010.

The rezoning of Dún Laoghaire golf club provoked the most bitter debate, and the proposal was only finally approved in March after an ultimatum from the Minister for the Environment, who ordered the council to rezone 40 hectares of land for housing or have the county plan deemed invalid.

The strategic absence of a number of councillors from the 4 a.m. vote helped to reverse the council's earlier rejection of the golf-course scheme. The club will relocate to Co Wicklow in 2008 to make way for residential development. The decision remains controversial, however, and some councillors could find themselves playing out of the rough over the next three weeks.

Nobody questions the need for houses in an area where young locals are even less likely than elsewhere to be able to buy homes. But sceptics point to the long lead-in to the deal, and question whether affordable housing will form any part of the eventual complex. While housing is an issue everywhere in the Dún Laoghaire/Rathdown area, most parties agree that the golf club controversy is unlikely to resonate far beyond Dún Laoghaire itself. Elsewhere the dominant issues are traffic, waste management, and in the words of one Fine Gael veteran, "the multitude of problems caused by underprovision of infrastructure during a period of rapid development".

With 18 seats between them on the outgoing council, both Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael privately admit they will do very well to hold their own on June 11th. Labour, on six seats, is targeting four more in the attempt to break the big two's stranglehold. But the smallest parties have the most obvious potential for gains.

Dún Laoghaire/Rathdown takes in the Dáil constituency of Dún Laoghaire and half of Dublin South. The Greens have a TD in both, as do the PDs, so their combined total of 3 seats looks like under-representation. The PDs will hope as a minimum to reclaim the seat they lost when Helen Keogh - not standing this time around - defected to Fine Gael. The party's Pakistani-born TCD scientist, Dr Mazhar Ali Bari, could also create a surprise in Ballybrack.

Poor organisation may have cost the Greens in 1999, when only Vincent MacDowell claimed a seat. With his death last year, Kealin Ireland was co-opted as the party's solitary councillor. But Nessa Childers, daughter of the late President and a former Labour Party member, standing in Blackrock, could be among those to benefit from a better Green performance this time.

Nobody is quite sure about Sinn Féin, which has to date declared candidates in Dundrum, Glencullen, and Ballybrack. A PD source suggested that were SF to take a seat in Ballybrack, "it would mean they're really on the march". The party's poster and canvass operations would suggest the six-seater Dundrum has been identified as a better chance. Although the ward returned three FF councillors, two FG, and one Labour in 1999, Fine Gael sources admit "there's probably a protest seat now". The strength of Eamon Gilmore's Labour machine in Shankill appears to have stymied any Sinn Féin ambitions there.

Poll-topper in Dún Laoghaire last time, Gilmore has made way under the dual mandate ban for party colleague Chris O'Malley. Other TDs replaced on the council were Barry Andrews, who topped the poll for Fianna Fáil in Blackrock; Olivia Mitchell, whose performance was instrumental in Fine Gael's 41 per cent vote share in Glencullen, and Fiona O'Malley (PD), who was also elected on the first count, in Stillorgan.

Liam Cosgrave, who resigned from Fine Gael last year, will not be defending his seat in Dún Laoghaire.