Voters in Kildare North will elect one more TD on November 29

Kildare North constituency profile

Kildare North will elect one more TD - five replacing the existing four.
The Electoral Commission recommended the change, noting that the population had risen to 134,896, according to the most recent census.
It is also the second fastest growing constituency nationally - its population rising by 15,248 or 12.8% since 2016.
Kildare North is more urbanised than Kildare South and has five significant towns Naas, Celbridge, Leixlip, Maynooth and Kilcock.
The EC has decided to add the areas of Donore, Caragh, Ladytown, Two Mile House and Killashee. These are in the hinterland of Naas and have moved from Kildare South.
The addition of a seat offers many opportunities and it surely means that Both Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil will have designs on taking a second seat.

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It will be interesting to see what happened to the vote achieved by Catherine Murphy, the former Social Democrats joint leader, who topped the poll in February 2020 with just over 9,800 first preference votes.

Dep Murphy is not contesting the poll and Cllr Aidan Farrelly has been selected to replace her on the SD ticket. Based in the Clane-Prosperous area, he was one of three sitting SD councillors to seek the nomination and the party membership opted for former mayor, Cllr Farrelly.

The decision prompted Cllr Bill Clear, who topped the poll in the Naas area in the local elections to announce that he was leaving the party and will run as an independent.

It will also be interesting to see how Sen Vincent P Martin fares. He burst on to the political scene as the Green Party’s Naas runner in the local elections of 2019. His barnstorming performance saw him finish just shy of a quota on the first count.

The following year he garnered a creditable 5,100 first preferences in the Dáil vote but the transfers didn’t arrive in sufficient numbers and he was eliminated in the fifth count.

Fine Gael are fielding no less than three candidates.

The long serving Maynooth-based Bernard Durkan will be 80 next year and he’s running again along with Cllr Evie Sammon from Ballymore Eustace and Cllr Joe Neville (Leixlip), the Kildare County Council cathaoirleach.

It will also be interesting to see how Reada Cronin fares. The Sinn Fein TD was elected on the sixth count last time and as a former councillor she has a solid base in the Celbridge area but may be concerned about the shift in support away from her party, according to national opinion polls.

Minister of State and barrister James Lawless will be accompanied on the Fianna Fail ticket by Cllr Naoise Ó Cearúil, a poll topping councillor in the Maynooth area.

Outgoing TDs The outgoing TDs are Catherine Murphy (SDP), Reada Cronin (SF), Bernard Durkan (FG) and James Lawless (FF).

If Reada Cronin loses her seat it will mean that both female TDs will not be reentering Dail Eireann - a seismic shift. She may be affected by the drop in support for Sinn Féin but she is a durable politician and she got transfers from a variety of sources in 2020 and could prove hard to dislodge.

James Lawless will most likely hold on to his seat and could top the poll (the boundary changes will help him) and so too may Bernard Durkan. FF will be hoping that Ó Cearúil wins votes in the north of the constituency and capitalises on the absence of Catherine Murphy (Lawless' base is in the greater Naas area). He has a genuine chance of a seat on his first Dáil run .

Cllr Angela Feeney, an active councillor, will be hoping to harness the left wing vote but the late Emmet Stagg performed poorly in 2020. That said she's a very hard working councillor and support for her party is on the up.