Ballot papers have been issued to voters in the Seanad election for the five vocational panels, effectively bringing a conclusion to intense campaigning by 112 candidates seeking 43 seats.
Separately, some 110,000 graduates of the former NUI colleges and Dublin University (Trinity College) have already received their ballots for the three seats on each university panel with 28 candidates.
In the postal vote election the ballot papers were sent on Wednesday to the electorate – just under 1,200 people who are the incoming Dáil, outgoing Seanad and 941 local authority councillors.
In all 140 candidates are competing for 49 Seanad places. The remaining 11 in the 60-seat Upper House will be nominated by the incoming taoiseach.
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Political parties have been doing deals on vote-trading to get their candidates elected. Left-wing parties Labour, the Social Democrats and the Green Party have reached an agreement to trade votes on panels on which they have no candidates in a bid to ensure success for their seven candidates in total.
Every TD, Senator and councillor has a vote on each panel and political parties can direct their members to vote for specific candidates. It is, however, a secret ballot, and while most politicians adhere to the direction from party headquarters there is no guarantee that all will comply and the outcomes are not guaranteed.
The five vocational panels represent sectors of Irish life and candidates must reflect those interests. The Agricultural panel has 11 seats, the Administrative panel seven, with five Cultural and Educational panel seats, nine on the Industrial and Commercial panel and 11 on the Labour panel.
Labour has four all new Seanad candidates Cllrs Angela Feeney (Kildare), Nessa Cosgrove (Sligo), Darragh Moriarty (Dublin) and Laura Harmon (Cork), having previously had four vocational panel Senators, two of whom, Marie Sherlock and Mark Wall, were elected to the Dáil, while Senators Annie Hoey and Rebecca Moynihan are not contesting.
The Social Democrats missed out on a Seanad seat last time and has general election candidates Patricia Stephenson, who ran in Carlow-Kilkenny, and Cllr Joan Hopkins, who ran in Fingal East, contesting.
Former Green Party minister of state Malcolm Noonan, who lost his Carlow-Kilkenny Dáil seat, is the party’s only candidate for the vocational panels running on the Agricultural panel.
On the university panels outgoing Trinity Senators Lynn Ruane and Tom Clonan are contesting again, while the third seat has remained vacant following the retirement last year of former senator David Norris.
The 16 candidates on this panel also include former Green Party minister Ossian Smyth, councillor and former Green Party lord mayor Hazel Chu, former minister for children Katherine Zappone, who lost her Dáil seat in 2020, former Ireland rugby player Hugo MacNeill, and lecturer on climate change Sadhbh O’Neill.
The deadline for the university panels is 11am on January 29th, when counting commences, and 11am on January 30th for the vocational panels.
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