Veteran Dublin Inner City activist and politician Christy Burke has been contesting national elections for the past forty years, but the closest the former IRA man and Concerned Parents Against Drugs activist came to being elected was in 2020 on his tenth attempt when he was beaten on the last count by 220 votes.

As a young man, Christy Burke was in the IRA and sided with the Provisionals in the 1970 split. He later spent some time in Portlaoise prison as a consequence.

His first electoral outing in Dublin Central for Sinn Féin  was in February 1982, when he took 1,458 (3%) of the vote and was eliminated on the 6th count after only gaining 47 votes in the intervening counts. It has to be said by way of mitigation that he was fishing out of the same pond as the late Tony Gregory (who won a seat for the first time at this election taking 4,703 votes) and Michael White of Sinn Féin the Workers’ Party (who took 1,672 votes). Nearly 60% of his transferred votes went to Gregory (36%) and White (23%)

He didn’t contest the November 1982 election, but polled impressively in the bye-election in the following year resulting from the death of Fianna Fáil TD George Colley taking 2,304 votes (7% of the total. When he went out two-fifths of his vote went to White of the SFWP, a quarter to Fianna Fáil, 7% to Fine Gael and just over a quarter was non-transferable.

TABLE 1 – Christy Burke’s Dail Electoral performance

YEAR	VOTE			Eliminated
	Votes	%	Quotas	Votes	Count
F1982	1458	3.2%	0.19	1505	6th
1983	2304	7.1%	0.14	2565	7th
1987	2501	5.3%	0.32	3579	11th
1989	1941	4.7%	0.28	3423	11th
1992	1362	3.7%	0.22	1706	8th
1997	2377	6.7%	0.33	3101	9th
2009	3770	13.3%	0.27	4420	6th
2011	1315	3.8%	0.19	1393	3rd
2016	2406	10.1%	0.41	3658	10th
2020	1509	4.8%	0.24	5168	9th

It was around this time that he was a founder member of the Concerned Parents against Drugs organisation which ostracised dealers in local communities in the North Inner City by marching on their homes. He was also active on behalf of the Moore Street traders; himself and Tony Gregory were imprisoned for 14 days in 1986 as a consequence of their activism on the traders’ behalf.

He took 2,501 votes in 1987 (5% of the total), a step forward from the last comparable contest in 1982 and also started ahead of the Worker’s Party candidate Mike Jennings. He took over a thousand votes in transfers and was eliminated on the penultimate count, his transfers pulling Dermot FitzPatrick ahead of Fine Gael’s Pat Lee to win by 78 votes – ironically, fifteen years later FitzPatrick would defeat Nicky Kehoe of Sinn Féin by 79 votes for the last seat.

In 1989 he was joined on the ticket by Tony O’Flaherty and collectively they polled 2,670 votes – 68% of O’Flaherty’s transfers went to Burke. He again made the penultimate count where 30% of his vote went to Labour’s Joe Costello as against 20% for the two Fianna Fáil candidates, but it wasn’t enough for Costello to bridge the gap.

His vote however slumped to 1,362 in 1992; he also received less than 200 of the 1,056 Worker’s Party and Democratic Left transfers distributed during the first three counts. He was eliminated on the 8th count with a quarter of his vote going to the two Fianna Fáil candidates, 15% to Fine Gael’s Jim Mitchell and the remainder non-transferable.

In 1994, he “photobombed” Ian Paisley when the DUP leader was a walkabout in Dublin, shaking his hand before informing him that he was the local Sinn Féin councillor.

In 1997, his vote improved again (2,377 or 7% of the total vote) and he made it to the penultimate count where despite over a third of his vote going to Labour’s Joe Costello it was enough for him to overtake the Fianna Fail and Fine Gael candidates.

In 2002 Sinn Féin ran Cabra Councillor Nicky Kehoe who narrowly missed out  on a seat and in 2007 Mary Lou McDonald. His final runout in the Sinn Féin colours was in the 2009 by-election caused by the death of Tony Gregory where he got his best ever vote of 3,770 votes – however he left Sinn Féin in some acrimony soon after.

His first togout in Independent colours saw him take only 1,315 votes in 2011 and be eliminated on the 3rd count – his transferred almost equally between Mary Lou McDonald of Sinn Fein, Joe Costello of Labour and Independent Maureen O’Sullivan.

His vote markedly improved in 2016 when he took 2,406 votes (10% of the total) and again wasn’t eliminated until the penultimate count. His transfers helped ensure the election of Maureen O’Sullivan at the expense of Gary Gannon of the Social Democrats.

Christy made it to the final count for the first time in 38 years in 2020 – despite only getting 1,509 votes (just under 5% of the total) on the first count. What transformed his fortunes was  the transfer of 1,835 votes (37% of the total) from Mary Lou McDonald’s surplus on the second count. On the final count he had 5,168 votes, just 550 votes behind Gary Gannon.

Unfortunately for Christy – Sinn Féin are unlikely to make the same mistake twice.