An election to all 18 seats on

Sligo County Council Sligo County Council ( ga, Comhairle Chontae Shligigh) is the authority responsible for local government in County Sligo, Ireland. As a county council, it is governed by the Local Government Act 2001. The council is responsible for housing and ...

was held on 24 May 2019 as part of the

2019 Irish local elections The 2019 Irish local elections were held in all local authorities in Ireland on Friday, 24 May 2019, on the same day as the 2019 European Parliament election and a referendum easing restrictions on divorce. Each local government area is divid ...

County Sligo County Sligo ( , gle, Contae Shligigh) is a county in Ireland. It is located in the Border Region and is part of the province of Connacht. Sligo is the administrative capital and largest town in the county. Sligo County Council is the local ...

was divided into 3

local electoral area A local electoral area (LEA; ga, Toghlimistéir Áitiúil) is an electoral area for elections to local authorities in Ireland. All elections use the single transferable vote. The Republic of Ireland is divided into 166 LEAs, with an average po ...

s (LEAs) to elect councillors for a five-year term of office on the

electoral system An electoral system or voting system is a set of rules that determine how elections and Referendum, referendums are conducted and how their results are determined. Electoral systems are used in politics to elect governments, while non-political ...

proportional representation Proportional representation (PR) refers to a type of electoral system under which subgroups of an electorate are reflected proportionately in the elected body. The concept applies mainly to geographical (e.g. states, regions) and political divis ...

by means of the

single transferable vote Single transferable vote (STV) is a multi-winner electoral system in which voters cast a single vote in the form of a ranked-choice ballot. Voters have the option to rank candidates, and their vote may be transferred according to alternate p ...

(PR-STV).

Boundary review

The 2018 LEA boundary review kept the two

municipal district A municipal district is an administrative entity comprising a clearly-defined territory and its population. It can refer to a city, a town, a village, a small grouping of them, or a rural area. Brazil In Brazil, municipal districts are, in genera ...

s used in the 2014 elections, while transferring one seat from Ballymote–Tubbercurry to Sligo and splitting the latter into two LEAs. The changes were enacted by

statutory instrument In many countries, a statutory instrument is a form of delegated legislation. United Kingdom Statutory instruments are the principal form of delegated or secondary legislation in the United Kingdom. National government Statutory instrument ...

(S.I.) No. 632/2018.

Overview

A total of 35 candidates contested the county's 18 seats, of whom fifteen were outgoing councillors.

Fianna Fáil Fianna Fáil (, ; meaning 'Soldiers of Destiny' or 'Warriors of Fál'), officially Fianna Fáil – The Republican Party ( ga, audio=ga-Fianna Fáil.ogg, Fianna Fáil – An Páirtí Poblachtánach), is a conservative and Christian- ...

and

Fine Gael Fine Gael (, ; English: "Family (or Tribe) of the Irish") is a liberal-conservative and Christian-democratic political party in Ireland. Fine Gael is currently the third-largest party in the Republic of Ireland in terms of members of Dáil � ...

each had nine candidates.

Sinn Féin Sinn Féin ( , ; en, " eOurselves") is an Irish republican and democratic socialist political party active throughout both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. The original Sinn Féin organisation was founded in 1905 by Arthur Gri ...

had three, Solidarity/

People Before Profit People Before Profit ( ga, Pobal Roimh Bhrabús, PBP) is a left-wing to far-left Trotskyist political party formed in October 2005. It is active in both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. History PBP was established in 2005 as t ...

had two, while and one each for the Labour Party,

Green Party A green party is a formally organized political party based on the principles of green politics, such as social justice, environmentalism and nonviolence. Greens believe that these issues are inherently related to one another as a foundation ...

and

Renua Renua Ireland, commonly called Renua, is a fringe list of political parties in the Republic of Ireland, political party in Ireland. The party was launched on 13 March 2015, with former Fine Gael Teachta Dála, TD Lucinda Creighton as founding le ...

. The nine independent candidates included

Declan Bree Declan Bree (born 1 July 1951) is an Irish independent politician. He was a founder of the Sligo/Leitrim Independent Socialist Organisation in 1974, and was a member of that group until joining the Labour Party in 1991. He served in Dáil Éi ...

, who was County Sligo's longest serving councillor. Thirteen of the fifteen candidates who were outgoing councillors were re-elected, including Bree who was first elected in

1974 Major events in 1974 include the aftermath of the 1973 oil crisis and the resignation of United States President Richard Nixon following the Watergate scandal. In the Middle East, the aftermath of the 1973 Yom Kippur War determined politics; f ...

to both the County Council and Sligo Borough Council. Several seats were decided by very narrow margins, and result was that Fine Gael gained three seats to become the largest party, with six seats. Fianna Fáil lost three seats, and the other group totals were unchanged. The long-serving Bree was re-elected in the Sligo–Strandhill LEA.

Results by party

Results by local electoral area

Ballymote–Tubbercurry

The Fine Gael director of elections made a formal complaint about the large increase in the number of

postal vote Postal voting is voting in an election where ballot papers are distributed to electors (and typically returned) by post, in contrast to electors voting in person at a polling station or electronically via an electronic voting system. In an ele ...

s cast — 252 compared to 131 in the same district in the 2014 election and 20 and 17 in the other two districts in 2019. The ensuing Garda investigation into potential

electoral fraud Electoral fraud, sometimes referred to as election manipulation, voter fraud or vote rigging, involves illegal interference with the process of an election, either by increasing the vote share of a favored candidate, depressing the vote share of ...

was still ongoing in February 2022.

Sligo–Drumcliff

Sligo–Strandhill

Results by gender

Footnotes

Sources

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References

{{2019 Irish local elections

Sligo Sligo ( ; ga, Sligeach , meaning 'abounding in shells') is a coastal seaport and the county town of County Sligo, Ireland, within the western province of Connacht. With a population of approximately 20,000 in 2016, it is the List of urban areas ...

Sligo County Council elections