Wicklow County Council runs on one of the smallest budgets per resident of any council

A party needs 17 of the 32 seats to outvote the rest. None has that: Independent is largest with 10. None of the 31 councils has a single-party majority. Fine Gael is second with 9 seats. The councillors elect a cathaoirleach each June to chair the council for a year; no open national list names them.

The 31 councils of Ireland

Seats by party as elected, largest party named; this council first.

Local and general election results 2024: Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage (CC BY-SA 4.0); areas matched to towns by TownRatings from Tailte Éireann boundaries and CSO Census 2022 Small Areas (CC BY 4.0).

Who to ask

Green: the council. Gold: a government department or one of its agencies. Grey: another public body.

1. 1

   The Baltinglass local electoral areaBaltinglass · 6 members
   Gerry O'NeillEdward TimminsPeter StapletonAvril CroninPatsy GlennonJason Mulhall
2. 2

   Wicklow County Council32 councillors from 6 local electoral areas
   Independent 10 · Fine Gael 9 · Fianna Fáil 4 · Social Democrats 3 · Sinn Féin 2 · Green Party 2 · Labour Party 1 · Independent Ireland 1
3. 3

   Dáil ÉireannWicklow-Wexford · 3 members
   Brian BrennanFionntán Ó SúilleabháinMalcolm Byrne

Party colours are neutral on purpose: they tell parties apart and aren’t the parties’ own. TDs: Houses of the Oireachtas Open Data (Oireachtas PSI Licence, CC BY 4.0).

Coolboy’s councillors, one by one

4 of the 6 were sitting councillors who were re-elected; 2 weren’t on the council before the election.

Seats by party in each of Wicklow County Council’s 6 local electoral areas

Each of the local electoral areas elects 3 to 7 councillors by single transferable vote: voters number the candidates in order, a candidate who reaches the quota is elected, and spare votes and those of the lowest candidate pass to the next preference. A councillor who leaves is replaced by co-option, usually from the same party, so the names can change without an election.

Councillors: same source as Who’s in charge, above.

10 of the 32 councillors are women, 31%; across all 31 councils the share is 26%. 20 sat on the council before the election and 12 are new to it.

The council: same source as Who’s in charge, above.

11,269 of 20,661 registered voters turned out, 54.5%: the 49th-highest of 166 local electoral areas (all of them: 49.4%). With 11,154 valid votes and 6 seats the quota was 1,594; the count ran to 10 rounds. Gerry O'Neill (Independent) passed the quota on first preferences; transfers filled the other 5. Jason Mulhall (Independent) was 8th on first preferences and elected on transfers, ahead of John Mullen (Fianna Fáil), 5th on first preferences. Jason Mulhall (Independent) took the last seat with 1,322 votes at the final count, 123 more than Deirdre McCormack (Social Democrats), on 1,199.

How Coolboy voted: same source as Who’s in charge, above.

74 candidates stood for 32 seats on Wicklow County Council in June 2024, 2.3 for each seat. Turnout across the council was 53.9%, the 12th-highest of 31 councils. Independent elected 10 of its 20 candidates. 25 of the 74 candidates were women (34%; 31% across the country), and 20 stood without a party. Across all 31 councils, 2,172 candidates stood for 949 seats, 2.3 for each.

Local elections: same source as Who’s in charge, above.

TDs as the Oireachtas lists them today, with any office they hold; a by-election or a change of party shows here, the 2024 count below does not change.

First preferences in Wicklow-Wexford, November 2024

38,537 of 63,003 registered voters turned out, 61.2%: the 13th-highest of 43 Dáil constituencies (all of them: 59.7%). The quota was 9,560: 38,236 valid votes for 3 seats, counted over 6 rounds. Nobody reached the quota on first preferences, so every seat was filled on transfers. The last seat went to Malcolm Byrne (Fianna Fáil) with 9,156 votes at the final count, 2,547 ahead of Pat Kennedy (Fianna Fáil), who had 6,609.

Dáil Éireann: same source as Who’s in charge, above.

Leaving out the HAP programme, that is the 6th-lowest of the 31 councils per resident; across all of them it is €1,551. The budget is up 10% on 2025, when it was €168.1M.

Commercial rates on businesses pay for 19% of the budget. Its annual rate on valuation is 0.2240, the 6th-lowest of the 31 councils that rate on revalued property. The Local Property Tax brings in another 12%.

Budgets: Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage, Local Authority Annual Budgets 2025 and 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), revenue account before inter-authority contributions are netted; residents: CSO Census 2022 (CC BY 4.0).

Wicklow County Council has 32 councillors for 155,851 residents: about 4,870 each, the 11th-highest of 31 councils. The range runs from 9,410 residents per councillor on Dublin City to 1,960 on Leitrim County.

Seats: local elections 2024 (Department of Housing, CC BY-SA 4.0); residents: CSO Census 2022 (CC BY 4.0).