BRADLEY BYTES: Former Mayor snubs President’s Freedom of the City of Galway ceremony
Uachtarán na hÉireann Catherine Connolly will be conferred with the Freedom of the City of Galway at a special ceremony this Friday afternoon.
The highest accolade Galway City Council can bestow, it is in recognition of the Shantalla native’s dedication to public service in her home city.
A barrister, President Connolly always stood out as an able, skilful politician at local authority meetings where she cut her teeth. She wasn’t just articulate, though, she had – and still has – a moral compass.
At Council meetings, she was often a lone voice in speaking against management, and holding the executive – or colleagues – to account for their decisions and actions.
Despite these and other attributes, who would have thought when she was elected to Galway City Council as a Labour Party councillor in 1999 that, almost 30 years later, she would be bestowed with the Freedom of the City?
Maybe, as she used say herself, we’d be “shocked but not surprised” at how far she has come since her breakthrough election in 1999, to becoming Mayor in 2004, and serving as a Galway West TD from the 2016 General Election up to her election as President in 2025.
No doubt President Connolly will blush – and possibly try not to choke – at all the nice things people will say about her at the ceremony in The Hardiman Hotel.
Many of the plaudits will come from former political opponents; from those who not only didn’t vote for her, but actively canvassed against her in the Presidential Election.
All that will be put to one side today to celebrate the achievement of an Independent candidate from Galway being elected Ireland’s First Citizen.
The great and the good of Galway will be present or represented today. Civic leaders from the Army and Garda and universities; religious leaders as well as business representatives; politicians including elected members of Galway City Council, former mayors, former recipients of the Freedom of the City and the current Mayor of Galway Mike Cubbard.
One former Mayor of Galway – or Mayor Emeritus – who has refused to attend is one of President Connolly’s former sparring partners at City Hall, Pádraig Conneely.
The former Fine Gael councillor returned his invite to the sender at College Road, with the following message scribbled in ink: “I will not accept or attend the above.”
He did the same when his nemesis, former radio presenter turned City Council International Relations Officer, Keith Finnegan was awarded the Freedom of the City of Galway some years ago. But why? “I’m not a hypocrite – and I don’t do hypocrisy,” Conneely replied.
Poll position
When previous election opinion polls from TG4 have not been borne out in the real election results, we have been quick to point out the differences.
It’s only fair then to acknowledge that the Galway West Bye-Election poll for TG4 and The Irish Times was pretty accurate.
According to Ipsos B&A, the average difference between the election result and the poll was 1.2%, well within the 4% margin of error.
It correctly predicted that the top three candidates by first preference vote would be Seán Kyne, Noel Thomas and Helen Ogbu, and it was fairly on the money with its prediction of where the other candidates would finish.
The poll did underestimate the support of Thomas of Independent Ireland – he got 21% of the first preference vote compared with 16% in the poll. Kyne got 20% in the election compared with 17% in the poll.
This difference could possibly be explained by voters changing their minds after seeing in the poll that it was effectively a two-horse race.
Shy Fine Gael or reluctant Independent Ireland supporters may have hardened their support for Kyne and Thomas respectively, after the poll showed they were in with a chance of winning – or maybe it encouraged more of them to turn out and vote as the race was so close.
More Mayoral history
Mayor of Galway Mike Cubbard’s third term as the city’s First Citizen is coming to an end.
One of the highlights will be presiding over Catherine Connolly’s Freedom of the City of Galway ceremony today, although one suspects he’d have preferred to give that up in favour of filling her Galway West seat in last month’s Bye-Election. It wasn’t to be.
Another Bye-Election candidate is about to take the chains of office. And it will be another historic occasion for Galway City.
Councillor Helen Ogbu, a Labour Party member who represents Galway City East, is in line to become Galway’s first black mayor at the local authority’s AGM next week.
That’s if the ruling pact of Fianna Fáil, Labour, Sinn Féin and Independents holds, and there is no indication that it won’t.
The Nigerian-native Irish citizen is not earning the position because of her skin, but it is important, nonetheless, to acknowledge the ground-breaking achievement of a person of colour becoming First Citizen of the City of the Tribes.