HISTORY
Cork North-Central is a direct descendant of the Cork Borough constituency which existed from 1921 until 1969.
In 1923, the Cork Progressive Association – a body consisting of Business and Commercial interests – managed to take two seats of the five on offer with less than a quota. What was even more remarkable is their second candidate only took 766 votes on the first count. They were greatly aided by a very strong terminal transfers from Cumann Na nGaedhal (85.1% versus 7.5% for Labour, 3.0% for the Farmers Party, 0.4% for Republicans) and the Farmers’ Party (80.0% versus 10.3% for Republicans, 8.5% for Labour). Similarly, in 1933, William FitzGerald of Fine Gael started last on the first count but was elected to the fourth of the five seats.
The constituency had a history of strong poll-toppers : JJ Walsh (Cumann Na nGaedhal) 2.4 quotas in 1923, W.T Cosgrave (CNG) 2.3 quotas in September 1927 and 2.2 quotas in 1932, Stephen Barrett (Fine Gael) 2.1 quotas in 1954 and of course Jack Lynch (Fianna Fáil) 1.8 quotas in 1965. Fianna Fáil managed to win three out of five seats here in 1951, 1957 and 1965 which signifies it was something of a Bellwether constituency.
It’s worth mentioning Richard Anthony, a trade Unionist who won a seat for Labour in 1927 but was expelled four years later for supporting the Cumann na nGaedhal government’s crackdown on the IRA. He held his seat until 1938, regained it in 1943 and then rejoined Labour in 1948. Then in his seventies, he failed to gain re-election to the Dáil in 1948 and 1951, but remained a member of the Seanad until his retirement in 1957 at age 82. A conservative by nature, in 1939 he proposed a motion at Cork Corporation congratulating Franco on “concluding his war against communism and anarchy in Spain”.
The Constituency was succeeded by Cork City North-West, which returned two Fianna Fáil and one Fine Gael TDs in both 1969 and 1973. Jack Lynch took well over 40% of the vote in both elections.
This in turn was succeeded by a five seat Cork City, where Fianna Fáil took three out of five seats and 57% of the vote in the 1977 landslide.
The Cork North-Central constituency first came into being in the 1981 election, being formed of the northern part of the Cork City constituency, as well as adjoining rural areas that had been in the Cork Mid Constituency. Collectively, Fianna Fáil took six out of ten seats in those constituencies in 1977, but could only muster 2 out of 5 in 1981.
The Progressive Democrats won a seat here with former Fianna Fáil candidate Mairin Quill in 1987 – she held it until 1997. She
Bernard Allen held a Fine Gael seat for thirty years and was somewhat unusual in the party in having a strong working-class base in Gurranebraher in the north-west of the city. Never finding an electoral rabbit hole I didn’t like, I’ve had a look at the votes in the five Gurranebraher wards from 2007 (Allen’s last electoral sortie) to the current day.
| YEAR | Fianna Fáil | Fine Gael | Sinn Féin | Labour | Left | Others/Ind. |
| 2007 | 23% | 31% | 11% | 13% | 11% | 10% |
| 2011 | 8% | 11% | 24% | 25% | 29% | 2% |
| 2016 | 14% | 6% | 35% | 4% | 34% | 2% |
| 2020 | 12% | 5% | 51% | 2% | 14% | 11% |
The Vote patterns are quite striking – in 2007 Fine Gael (largely thanks to Allen) topped the poll in Gurranebraher. In his absence, their vote more than halved in 2011 despite a large national swing to the party. This is something I might have a further look into.
Fianna Fáil won three of the five seats with only 2.2 quotas in 2002, and they managed to retain them with an increased vote in 2007. By contrast, they only just retained one in 2011.
OVERVIEW
The new Cork North-Central is a bit of a Frankenstein’s monster, with Ballincollig coming in from Cork North-West, Mallow coming in from Cork East, and the city areas south of the Lee going to Cork South-Central. The addition of Ballincollig does make some sense as the town is within the new city boundaries although it has not yet been absorbed structurally – but the addition of Mallow some 15 miles north of the city’s limits was quite unexpected and to be quite honest is a bit bizarre. It also effectively skewered Sean Sherlock’s vote, with his base in one constituency but the majority of his vote in another.
RECENT CONSTITUENCY RESULTS
The following table gives the result of what is to be the constituency of Cork North-Central in the coming election.
There were a few issues – firstly, I’m missing tally data for Mallow in the 2011 election, so a reasonable guestimate was used instead. Secondly, it is rather difficult to apportion seats as Sean Sherlock’s base is in Mallow but the majority of his vote would remain in Cork East under the redraw. Similarly in 2007, Batt O’Keeffe’s vote in Cork South-West would have been cut in half by the movement of his Ballincollig base into Cork North-Central.
I’ve decided to not include both of them but will include notes on the relevant elections.
| YEAR | SEATS | Fianna Fáil | Fine Gael | Sinn Féin | Labour | Greens | Left**** | Others | Inds. |
| 2007 | 4 | 37.0% 2 | 26.7% 1 | 8.5% | 14.6%** 1 | 3.7% | 3.0% | 0.6% | 5.9% |
| 2011 | 4 | 14.9% 1 | 28.8% 1 | 14.1% 1 | 27.8%** 1 | 1.2% | 7.8% | 2.7%* | 2.8% |
| 2016 | 4 | 27.3% 1 | 18.3% 1 | 18.3% 1 | 8.8%** | 3.6% | 13.2% 1 | 5.8%* | 4.8% |
| 2020 | 4 | 25.2% 1 | 14.9% 1 | 23.4% 1*** | 8.0%** | 6.8% | 5.6% 1 | 8.4%* | 7.8% |
NOTES:
* Votes for Others includes…. 2011 New Vision 1.6%, Workers Party 1.1%, 2016 – Renua 3.3% Workers’ Party, 2.3%, 2020 – Social Democrats 4.2% Aontu 3.4%.
** The approximate Proportion of Sean Sherlock’s vote that would have been in the new Cork North-Central in each election : 2007 : 33%, 2016 : 29%, 2020 : 36%. The Cork East tallies from 2011 remain more elusive than the fifth secret of Fatima.
*** Sinn Féin did not run a candidate in Cork North-West (Ballincollig) in 2020, so therefore there vote is slightly lower than it could have been. Looking at the Ballincollig votes in 2016, if they had ran a candidate in 2020, their vote may have been closer to 26%.
**** Left represents Solidarity–People Before Profit in 2020, Anti Austerity Alliance-People Before Profit in 2016, and the Socialist Party in 2011 and 2007 – the candidate being Mick Barry each time.
THE 2020 ELECTION
The 2020 election saw a fall in votes in Fianna Fáil (-3.1%) and Fine Gael (-2.8%) and a steep rise for Sinn Féin who took nearly 27% with just one candidate. Mick Barry saw his vote fall by more than half, but retained his due to strong transfers from Sinn Féin and the Greens.
In fact if Sinn Féin (13,811 votes) had run a second candidate and managed their votes well, it’s quite possible that Solidarity/People Before Profit (3,703 votes) would not have taken a seat.
Below are the poll-toppers in Cork North-Central in 2020.
Two whole electoral areas – Cork City North-East and Cork City North-West – were fully within the boundaries of the Cork North-Central constituency in 2020, and six others – Cork City South-Central, Cork City South-West, Cobh, Fermoy, Mallow and Macroom were partly in it.
The Party breakdowns in each area are shown below.
| AREA | Sinn Féin | Fianna Fáil | Fine Gael | Solidarity-PBP | Others | Ind. |
| Cork City North-East (31%) | 25% | 20% | 11% | 7% | 20% | 17% |
| Cork City North-West (29%) | 39% | 19% | 10% | 10% | 12% | 10% |
| Cork South City (9%) | 18% | 27% | 21% | 6% | 23% | 4% |
| Cork County (30%) | 16% | 35% | 34% | 4% | 17% | 5% |
NOTES:
* Votes for Others includes…. Labour, Social Democrats, Greens, Workers Party, Aontu.
** South City contains part of Cork City South-West and Cork City South-Central Local Electoral Areas.
*** Cork County contains parts of Cobh, Macroom, Fermoy and Macroom Electoral areas. Approximately half the votes come from the Cobh area.
Note the strength of Sinn Féin in Cork City North-West – their vote rose to over half in certain areas. Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael did somewhat better south of the River Lee.
Below are the support maps for the top three successful candidates – I’ve used the same colour scheme for each of them.
Thomas Gould polled best on the northside of the city, taking over half the vote in Gurranebraher, Churchfield, Farranree and Knocknaheeny.
Padraig O’Sullivan polled better in the county than the city, taking in excess of 30% in much of the suburban and rural east of the city. He did best in his home area of Glounthane/Little Island where he took over half the vote. Colm Burke also polled somewhat better outside the city than within it, although his vote did exceed 30% in parts of Bishopstown.
DEMOGRAPHICS
I hope to add a section on Demographics later.
TRANSFERS
Below are details of the main transfers during the 2020 count.
| CNT | PTY | F.F. | F.G. | Greens | Labour | S.-P.B.P. | Others | Independents | NT | Total |
| 2 | S.F. | 301 (9%) | 88 (3%) | 176 (5%) | 294 (9%) | 1,459 (42%) | 400 (12%) | 737 (21%) | 3,455 | |
| 9 | S.D. | 97 (6%) | 70 (5%) | 493 (33%) | 245 (16%) | 353 (23%) | 45 (3%) | 76 (5%) | 114 (8%) | 1,503 |
| 10 | Aontú | 276 (17%) | 97 (6%) | 123 (7%) | 85 (5%) | 218 (13%) | 571 (35%) | 277 (17%) | 1,647 | |
| 11 | Labour. | 598 (17%) | 418 (12%) | 898 (26%) | 616 (18%) | 527 (15%) | 456 (13%) | 3,513 | ||
| 13 | F.F. | 447 (26%) | 322 (18%) | 220 (13%) | 377 (22%) | 377 (22%) | 1,743 | |||
| 15 | Greens | 1,532 (27%) | 1,971 (34%) | 509 (9%) | 1,726 (30%) | 5,738 |
The biggest recipient by far of the Sinn Féin surplus was Mick Barry of Solidarity-People Before Profit with nearly fifteen hundred votes. The second biggest recipient interestingly enough was populist independent councillor Ken O’Flynn who got 428 extra votes.
The Social Democrat transfers stayed Left, with nearly half going to their centre-left colleagues Labour and the Greens and another quarter to Solidarity-People Before Profit. The Aontu transfer on the following saw over a third of their vote go to O’Flynn.
Nearly 30% of the Labour vote went Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. The Fianna Fáil terminal vote spread fairly widely.
The most interesting transfer was the Greens on the final count, where the transfers showed a very clear preference for either Fine Gael or Solidarity-People Before Profit over Ken O’Flynn.
THE CONSTITUENCY REDRAW
The Constituency Commission recommended that the new Cork North-Central consist of the areas in the old Cork North-Central….
- Minus the areas south of the River Lee (Going to Cork South Central)
- Minus the DEDs of Dripsey and Gowlane (Going to Cork North-West)
- Plus the town of Ballincollig (Coming from Cork North-West)
- Plus the town of Mallow (Coming from Cork East)
In short it really is a bit of a Frankenstein of a constituency.
The image below shows the largest parties in what will be the Cork North-Central constituency in the next General Election.
Below is a close up of the largest parties in the City area. Sinn Féin topped the poll across most of the Urban area, bar Ken O’Flynn in the Dublin Hill area and Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the Greens in areas bordering the Lee.
Taking the tally figures at face value, the party totals for the new constituency would be as follows.
| AREA | Sinn Féin | Fianna Fáil | Fine Gael | Sol-PBP | Labour | Other | Independents |
| Cork North-Central 2020 | 26.7% | 24.6% | 15.1% | 7.2% | 4.9% | 11.3% | 10.3% |
| To Cork South-Central | 18.0% | 27.2% | 21.1% | 6.4% | 4.3% | 19.1% | 3.9% |
| To Cork North-West | 18.0% | 32.6% | 30.9% | 4.0% | 1.6% | 10.7% | 2.6% |
| Ballincollig | 32.6% | 20.7% | 44.8% | 2.0% | |||
| Mallow | 18.0% | 19.5% | 10.1% | 39.3% | 8.1% | 4.9% | |
| Cork North-Central 2024 | 23.4% | 24.6% | 14.3% | 5.6% | 8.0% | 14.5% | 9.5% |
Sinn Féin see a sizeable drop in their vote, but this is mainly because they didn’t contest Cork North-West (Ballincollig last time). It would be perfectly reasonable to assume that a good chunk of the 45% who voted for others in Ballincollig (Aontu/Greens/Social Democrats) would have voted for Sinn Féin if they were on the ticket which would have ensured that Sinn Féin would be in and around 26%-27% mark.
Fine Gael see a slight drop in their vote due in particular to the coming absence of the middle-class areas south of the Lee – but the extra seat would mean that they should be safe on the above vote.
Labour are on half a quota but half of that vote is in the old Cork North-Central and half is in Mallow – and the latter may well fade away if there isn’t a Sherlock or other strong candidate on the ticket in the town.