Galligan gets ready to do battle for last seat on Ballyduff MD

I have 880 votes and I want to thank everyone who put their trust in me and voted for me.

Fianna Fáil’s Nathan Galligan has a fight on his hands to secure a seat on the Ballyjamesduff Municipal District when counting begins this evening.

Tallies following the opening of the Electoral Area (EA) boxes this morning indicate the Cllr Shane P O’Reilly (II), Cllr Trevor Smith (FG), Cllr TP O’Reilly (FG), Cllr Winston Bennett (FG) and Cllr Philip Brady (FF) are all in contention to secure seats on the MD with the sixth and final seat wide open for battle between Noel Connell (SF); Lester Gordon (SI); Nathan Galligan (FF), and Grainne McPhillips (Aontú).

While Nathan is certain that a long night lies ahead once counting begins, he says he'is ready to “fight” for that much-coved last seat on the Ballyjamesduff Municipal District.

Meanwhile, the current state of play in the Electoral Area is: Cllr Shane P O'Reilly - 15.2% with 1,750 votes; Cllr Trevor Smith - 14.3% or 1,642 votes followed by his party colleague, Cllr Winston Bennett on 12.4% or 1,429 votes. Next up is Cathaoirleach Philip Brady on 11% with 1,262 votes, followed by Cllr TP O'Reilly (FG) with 10% of the vote.

Sinn Féin's Noel Connell is in the running to reclaim the seat he lost in 2019 and has 9.2% of the votes tallied so far. Dark horse Lester Gordon is not far behind with 8.6% of the vote; with Nathan Galligan also in the mix at 7.2%. Cllr Shane P O'Reilly who is out in front on 15.2% is likely to be elected on the first count.

But back to Nathan who is “still in the race”. “I have 880 votes and I want to thank everyone who put their trust in me and voted for me,” he continued before adding that it was clear that Fine Gael were determined to retain the three seats on the municipal district.

“I’m in eighth position at the minute with Noel O’Connell slightly ahead and Lester Gordon about 100 votes ahead of me. We are in for a bit of a battle but I think that when surpluses start being distributed, I might overtake Lester; perhaps he will get transfers; I’m not sure at this stage how it’s going to pan out. It looks like that Cllr Philip Brady will retain his seat and that is very good from a party perspective.”

Galligan admits that the core area in which he was vying for votes was “congested” with Cllr Bennett, Grainne McPhilips, Cllr Trevor Smith, Cllr Philip Brady, Lester Gordon and himself in the mix.

“We were all within a six or seven miles radius of each other all looking for votes so in fairness to the people, while some of the votes didn’t go my way, they did come out and vote and that is important,” he added.

“I was hoping to get 1,000 to 1,050 votes and, with that, I would have been in with a shout; I got a bit less than that but that's politics for you and you can’t really predict what’s going to happen until the boxes are opened”.

The Fianna Fáil hopeful says he’s “still in it” and pointed to how nothing good comes easy. “You have to work hard at everything you do and we are in with a fighting chance, so here we go. The area was congested and local people have connections to candidates and the votes went every which way yesterday. It wasn’t about party.”