Father-daughter duo unlucky for Green Party

A father and his 18 year old daughter were unlucky not to be elected in their respective county areas.

Gordon Reid and his daughter Catríona, who are both with the Green Party, each came within a few hundred votes of election in what was a successful overall campaign for the Greens.

Running in the Carrigaline LEA, Catríona Reid, who is currently preparing for her Leaving Certificate, tallied a total of 1,282 votes at the seventh count, just behind 19 year old Ben Dalton-O’Sullivan.

Mr Reid said: “I think she did a great job. It was very brave of her to stand in the first place; as far as we know she was the youngest candidate in the country.When I was Catríona's age, there wasn't such a thing as the Green Party, and there was no such thing as social media. It was still called the Ecology Party then.”

Mr Reid, who ran in the Bandon-Kinsale LEA, partly attributed the Green Party’s successful campaign to what he described as a “phenomenon” of young adults and their grandparents coming together for green issues.

“I’ve heard of young adults and their grandparents coming together to put pressure on the people in the middle. Young people and their grandparents are both very much aware of green issues, with many of the grandparents having grown up at a time when life was a lot more green anyway,” said Mr Reid.

The Green Party took two of 55 seats in the County Council and four seats in the City Council.