Cork North-Central expands to a five-seater with significant changes to its boundaries – areas south of the river go into Cork South-Central, while the large towns of Ballincollig (now technically within the city boundaries although realistically not physically yet a part of the city proper) and Mallow come in.

THE BIGGEST PARTIES PER DED IN 2020

According to the tallies about three-quarters of the votes in the new constituency were cast in Cork North-Central, 15% in Cork North-West (Ballincollig) and 10% in Cork East (Mallow).

The new Cork North-Central consists of much of the old North-Central north of the Lee plus Ballincollig from Cork North-West and Mallow from Cork East.

All four of the outgoing TDs  from Cork North-Central retain  a majority of their vote within the new boundaries; Colm Burke (Fine Gael) does however lose over a fifth of his vote. Two candidates from outside the old Cork North-Central, Aindriais Moynihan (FF – Cork North West) and Sean Sherlock (LAB – Cork East) would take more than two thousand votes in the constituency.  Moynihan will almost certainly run again in North-West; Sherlock has a more complicated decision to make.

The following table lists those candidates who took over 1,000 votes in this area according to the tallies. %TV (Total Vote) refers to the percentage of each candidate’s 2020 vote that lies within the new constituency, while %Q (Quota) refers to what proportion of a new quota each candidate would achieve on their tally vote.

RELEVANT CANDIDATES

SURNAME	PARTY	CONST.	TALLY	%TV	%Q
GOULD	SF	Ck NC	12,359	91%	1.27
O’SULLIVAN	FF	Ck NC	7,044	88%	0.72
BURKE	FG	Ck NC	5,108	79%	0.52
O’FLYNN	IND	Ck NC	3,763	97%	0.39
BARRY	S-P	Ck NC	3,203	89%	0.33
FITZGERALD	FF	Ck NC	2,845	87%	0.29
MOYNIHAN	FF	Ck NW	2,485	26%	0.25
MORAN	GP	Ck NC	2,448	79%	0.25
SHERLOCK	LAB	Ck E	2,406	35%	0.25
MAHER	LAB	Ck NC	2,225	90%	0.23
TOOMEY	AON	Ck NC	1,047	80%	0.11

Mick Barry faces an uphill battle to return to the Dail; in 2020 he started in fifth place behind independent Ken O’Flynn, but jumped ahead on the second count with two-fifths of the Sinn Féin surplus. With the likelihood of a second Sinn Féin candidate running, those votes may not be available – and Barry also loses more votes in the redraw than O’Flynn.

O’Flynn himself has a strong base in the north-east of the city – a quarter of his vote came from the Ballincollie Road polling station alone. In much of the rest of the city area, Sinn Féin were dominant – the exceptions were Fianna Fail in Montenotte, the Greens in part of the North City Centre, and Fine Gael in part of Sunday’s Well.

As I alluded to above, Sean Sherlock TD faces a very difficult decision, as his core base of Mallow moves into Cork North-Central but the majority of his vote remains in Cork East. On the tallies he probably would be in significant difficulty whichever choice he makes – in Cork North-Central he would come in at just under half a quota.

Only parties with sufficient support in this constituency are afforded a  column. CONST stands for constituency and PROP for proportion.

PARTY SUPPORT

CONST	PROP	SF	FF	FG	LAB	OTH	IND
Ck NC	75%	28.1%	24.0%	13.8%	5.1%	17.6%	11.5%
Ck NW	15%		32.8%	21.8%		43.5%	1.9%
Ck East	10%	18.0%	19.5%	10.1%	39.3%	8.2%	4.9%
TOTAL		23.0%	24.8%	14.6%	7.9%	20.3%	9.4%O

First thing to note here is that Sinn Féin did not run a candidate in Cork North-West – the only constituency in the country they didn’t do so. This led to a very large vote for Other Parties in Ballincollig – mainly the Greens, the Social Denocrats and Aontu. It’s reasonable to assume that many of these voters would have plumped for Sinn Féin if the choice had been available. If Sinn Féin had taken 20% in Ballincollig (not an unreasonable assumption), they would have got closer to 26% as opposed to 23%.

There would seem to one guaranteed seat for each of Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, Sinn Féin with the last two being contested by Labour, Solidarity-PBP, a second Sinn Féin candidate and an Independent.