FORMER LABOUR councillor Davy Hynes was in a nervous but hopeful place for the weekend as he held vigil at St. Joseph’s Centre for the election count.
But as the skies cleared over the bottom half of the Wexford district table he began to become more comfortable and confident.
“It’s still looking good for me,” he said on Sunday evening, just hours before he would be deemed elected without reaching the quota.
The Davitt Road man, who resigned from the Labour Party last year due to his difference of opinion on the direction the party was taking, believed that he would not have polled as well if he had still been a member of that party.
“I was probably never seen as a true Labour member as I started out in Democratic Left. When I resigned I could have lost Labour votes but I would have gained the votes of those dissatisfied with the party.
“I think I’ve done better by not being in Labour.”
He added that Labour had taken a major hit and were the big losers of the weekend but he said that this was a pity: “On the basis of culpability, the bigger party should be taking the bigger hits but I suppose Fine Gael did what it said it would and Labour fell in behind them.”
He put the rise in popularity for the Independents down to the public disaffection with the government.
“People are not as trusting of parties anymore and I think they’ve seen how the Independents in the Dáil have succeeded in calling the government to account on things. I hope to do the same thing in the council chamber.”
He admitted that the council will be a “strange new world”: “It will be a different council but there is no reform. Anyone who thinks that there’ll be a revolution in local politics can think again.”
[Full election coverage in this week’s Echo newspaper]