Longford Fine Gael councillor to run as independent after party overlooks sister

Shortly after the Longford Fine Gael executive announced the final details of their local elections line-up a bombshell was dropped with the potential to cause a serious headache for the party's strategy in the Ballymahon Municipal District.

At the end of last year it was announced that FG's third outgoing councillor in the Ballymahon MD area, Lanesboro-based Cllr Ger Farrell, wasn't contesting the forthcoming election and at a selection convention in Abbeyshrule last December, Martin Skelly defeated Cllr Farrell's sister Lorraine and Ballymahon's Gráinne Moffitt in a vote to gain his place on the election ticket.

Within a matter of hours of the party posting their final line up to contest the election, Cllr Gerard Farrell announced his resignation from Fine Gael and signalled his intention to stand as an Independent candidate.

The Farrell family has a long legacy of political service. Gerard's father, Adie, engaged in a political career that spanned the best part of 40 years, and before that Adie's father, Ger, was also a council representative.

“My sister Lorraine contested the party convention in November and narrowly lost out. Since then a number of local supporters have approached us and suggested I run as an independent,” Cllr Farrell told the Leader.

Also read: Former Longford & Leinster GAA Chairperson Martin Skelly selected on Fine Gael’s team in Ballymahon MD

The newly minted Independent candidate says it was not a decision he took lightly: “We sent a letter through our local FG branch outlining the statistics of the Farrell family. We've been consistently getting votes for the last 60 years,” he said.

Those six decades of local representation have all been under the banner of the Fine Gael party. Cllr Farrell goes on the hustings in 2024 without a party machine behind him.

“I'm a councillor for 10 years,” he says of the task ahead, “I work for any person that wants me to do anything. I work for the local community and the local people, like my father before me. We put the community and the people first and the party after that.”

Cllr Farrell says leaving behind the affiliations will not be difficult: “We've had a good association with Fine Gael for a long number of years, but they weren't number one. The community and the people in the community were always number one. I've never been at a Fine Gael Ard Fheis and my father was probably only at two or three of them.

“Working with the local community is what's important to us. Getting good things done for the community,” he said.

Also read: Longford Fine Gael add two new candidates to local elections line-up

The competition for seats in the Ballymahon MD will be quite stiff.

All six sitting councillors, Cllr Paul Ross (FG), Cllr Pat O’Toole (FF), Cllr Mick Cahill (FF), Cllr Colm Murray (FG), Cllr Gerard Farrell and Cllr Mark Casey (Ind), are contesting for their seats, with Martin Skelly (FG), Sean Mimnagh (FF) and John Rooney (Sinn Féin) also in the race and the possibility of other candidates to emerge in the weeks ahead.

The increase in the county's population in the last five years will also be a factor.

“It's going to be a difficult fight for everybody. There are quite a number of candidates in the field now. I've done a lot of good work in this area here. I've a good relationship with my colleagues in Longford County Council. Lanesboro needs a strong representative, I feel I'm definitely that strong representative,” Cllr Farrell concluded.