The Green Party has won its first seat on Cork City Council since the 2004 local election.
Lorna Bogue was deemed to be elected on the second count shortly after the count resumed in City Hall at 10am this morning, with 2,265 votes, picking up 58 votes following the distribution of Solidarity candidate Ed Fitzgerald's vote of 255.
She was congratulated and embraced immediately by former Senator and former city councillor, Dan Boyle, who is also poised to win a seat later today in the south-central LEA.
While the last Green councillor on the council was Cllr Chris O'Leary in 2009, the last time the Green Party won a seat on the council was in 2004.
Ms Bogue said: “I had obviously seen the tallies last night, but I’m surprised at the percentage that I got, because the national exit poll was 6%.
"I felt ‘well, Cork likes the Greens’, so I thought it might be a little higher, but to be as high as 14% was something I didn’t expect at all.
It wasn’t as if people just became concerned about the environment - that’s been trundling along for a while and maybe just slipped under the radar. People aren’t generally asked direct questions about climate or the environment, so maybe it was down to how the polling was done as well.
Ms Bogue, 26, from Mahon, is a committed activist, having served as the Press Officer for the Cork branch of the Together for Yes campaign during the 2018 referendum campaign.
She has a master's degree in Economic Analysis, completing her dissertation on local government taxation.
She was the Green Party candidate for Cork South Central in the 2016 General Election and was eliminated in the 10th count with over 3,200 votes.
Additional reporting by Ryan O'Neill
