Fianna Fáil retains its position as the largest party on Cork City Council

Labour had a successful election, going from one to three seats.

The Social Democrats were in with a shout of their first seat on the city council through Pádraig Rice, while Fine Gael, the Greens, and Sinn Féin will be assessing their electoral strategies after disappointing results.

Sitting councillors, including the deputy lord mayor and Green Party’s Colette Finn, Rabharta’s Lorna Bogue, and Sinn Féin’s Mick Nugent lost their seats.

Mr Nugent’s two running mates in his area were elected.

While just one local electoral area — the North West — had filled all of its seats by 9.30pm last night, the overall trends were clear.

Fianna Fáil, which went into the local elections with eight seats on the council, was on course last night to hold those eight — with the possibility of a ninth on the cards.

Tánaiste Micheál Martin hailed his party’s result, and said the notion it would come in a distant third had been “completely disproven”.

“Fianna Fáil will be a major competitive force in the local authority for the next five years, contrary to what many commentators and people were predicting for a long time,” he said.

“I have been looking at opinion polls for the last three years, internet panel polling having Fianna Fáil at 14% and 15%.

“Clearly, Fianna Fáil will be well ahead of that — at 20% by the time all of these counts are collated.

We put up a very robust performance and we’re holding our own, compared to our performance in the general election in 2020. 

In the North West area, Fianna Fáil’s Tony Fitzgerald was the first person to be deemed elected at the count centre on Saturday.

Mr Fitzgerald topped the poll on the first count with 1,930 votes, 177 votes above the quota, while Fine Gael’s Damian Boylan also retained his seat with 1,872 votes.

He was followed yesterday by Fianna Fáil’s John Sheehan, Sinn Féin’s Ken Collins, and Michelle Gould — also of Sinn Féin and wife of TD Thomas Gould.

Solidarity’s Brian McCarthy also held his seat here, beating Irish People party candidate Ross Lahive by 190 vote in a dogfight for the sixth and final seats.

There were loud cheers in the counting hall when his election was announced.

Mr Lahive said he was proud of himself, and said he would use the results to build towards a general election campaign.

In the North East area, Labour councillor John Maher retained his seat.

He is set to be joined on the council by Peter Horgan in the South East area and Laura Harmon in the South West area.

History was made in Cork late last night with the election of the city’s first black city councillor. 

The Green Party’s Honore Kamegni was deemed elected in the city’s South East local electoral area on the 12th count.

Mr Kamegni, 46, a manager with An Post in Little Island who arrived in Ireland from Cameroon in 2002, moved to Cork in 2006, and became an Irish citizen in 2013, said that — despite being targeted by significant racist abuse on social media — the people he met on the campaign trail were always supportive.

“They wanted to see change, they wanted to see new faces, new ideas, and new energy,” he said.

The sustained racist online abuse began to ramp up earlier this year.

He said: “I was not used to this kind of reaction from people.

“When I first started getting it, I thought: ‘My God,what is happening?’ Then I said to myself that I don’t have to be affected by all of this.

“I have to continue my hard work and focus.

“I have been canvassing for 14 months. I have covered every corner of my ward, from the rural to the city. I have never spoken to any residents on the doorstep who were hostile to me. 

Any kind of hostility and hatred was happening online. They are not real people. They might not even be living in Ireland.  

“For me, there is no point in focusing on these people because you cannot fight people you cannot see or speak to.

“My message to those people today is the result – the response I’m getting from the election shows that people are rejecting their message.”

Independent Ireland’s Ken O’Flynn got the highest vote in the city, with 3,134 first-preference votes in the North East area, with a large surplus of 1,150 votes.

“My message to the people for the last five years has been very, very simple. It’s about common-sense politics,” he said.

“As a gay man, married to a Spanish man, I don’t have a problem with foreign people coming in to our country.

“I am not protesting outside libraries or outside direct provision centres, I don’t believe that’s the right way to go.

“However, I am concerned about the management of all of this. I am deeply concerned about people entering the country who tear up their passports.”

He said he has verbalised what people are telling him, and confirmed that he plans to stand as a candidate in the next general election.

In the South West area, Fianna Fáil’s Fergal Dennehy topped the poll where his party colleague, Colm Kelleher, and Fine Gael’s Garret Kelleher held their seats.

In the South Central area, Fine Gael’s Shane O’Callaghan topped the poll and retained his seat with 1,870 first-preference votes — with a surplus of 342 votes — while Fianna Fáil’s Sean Martin, a brother of Micheál Martin, took the second seat.

In the South East area, Fianna Fáil’s Terry Shannon topped the poll and councillor Kieran McCarthy also held his seat.