GE2024: Council will need to fill two seats after the elevation to the Dail of Dempsey and Toole

Two Meath county councillors are among the 174 TDs elected to the 34th Dáil which means their seats on the local authority will now need to be filled.

They are independent councillor Gillian Toole who won the additional seat in Meath East and Fianna Fáil councillor Aisling Dempsey who took the third seat in Meath West. They were among the ten sitting councillors vying for seats across the two constituencies.

Gillian Toole has been a councillor for ten years and was initially elected for Fine Gael in the Ratoath area in 2014 before going independent in 2019 ahead of the local elections that year. She retained that seat in convincing fashion in the 2024 election topping the poll with more than 3,000 votes. She won the extra seat that was up for grabs in Meath East to become the first ever independent TD to be elected in Meath.

Fianna Fáil councillor Aisling Dempsey was first elected in the Trim area in 2019, a seat she retained in the recent local elections with the party also managing to get a second councillor elected in the Trim MD in Padraig Coffey. In the case of a councillor representing a political party getting elected, the party will then have to select a replacement, normally through a convention. This often happens after resignations or in the case of passings, such as the untimely sudden death of Damien O'Reilly which saw his cousin, Caroline, succeed to a Fianna Fáil seat in the Ratoath electoral last year. It is also the case when a councillor gets elected to the Dáil.

On election, Independent councillors have to nominate a successor and have their name placed in an envelope with Meath Co Council for safekeeping in the event of their vacating their seat, or in event of their passing while in office.