*Former Clare resident, Gerben Uunk is among those hoping for a nomination from Clare County Council.
SIX PROSPECTIVE candidates for the Presidential election have confirmed they will be addressing Clare councillors on Monday to try secure a nomination but the cohort will not include Gareth Sheridan (IND) or Maria Steen (IND).
A total of 26 individuals made contact with Clare County Council to express an interest in seeking the local authority’s nomination for the Presidential election which will be held on October 24th 2025.
Seven years ago, Peter Casey (IND) received a nomination from Clare County Council as proposed by former councillor, Ann Norton (IND). It seems local representatives won’t have such an influential role this time round with none of the candidates on the cusp of getting in the ballot paper making the trip to Clare.
Clare County Council had committed to releasing details to the media by Friday afternoon of the full line-up of candidates to address a special meeting on Monday but this has yet to be released.
The Clare Echo has obtained correspondence issued to county councillors on Friday which detailed that six candidates had confirmed they would attend the special meeting on Monday afternoon.
Searlait Ní Chianáin, Keith McGrory, Diarmaid Mulcahy, Sarah-Louise Mulligan, Dr Cora Stack and Gerben Uunk will all pitch their case to Clare councillors.
Among the 26 hopefuls to contact Clare County Councill were Sheridan, Casey, Nick Delehanty (IND) and Kilrush native Conor O’Brien (IND) who contested the 2020 General Election for Renua. None of this have confirmed their attendance to Clare County Council and as such are set to miss out on a chance to try secure the support of Clare councillors.
As previously reported by The Clare Echo, businessman Casey in his pitch to Clare councillors included three deceased councillors in his correspondence.
Founder of Nutriband Inc, Sheridan has two of the required four local authority nominations having secured the support of Kerry County Council and Tipperary County Council. Instead of travelling to Clare, he is focusing on local authorities in Louth, Meath and Offaly.
Barrister Steen has the backing of thirteen Oireachtas members, she needs to get this figure to twenty.
Of the six hopefuls, one of them has lived in Co Clare. Holland native, Gerben Uunk who had been a councillor in Amsterdam, lived in Clare for thirteen years from 2006 to 2019. In 2014, he contested the local elections in Clare, appearing on the country’s longest ballot paper in the Ennis Municipal District where he received 92 votes. After moving to Limerick, the co-founder of the Animal Welfare Party contested three elections last year and was unsuccessful in his efforts to become the first Directly Elected Mayor of Limerick and also lost out in General and Local Elections.
Searlait Ní Chianáin aka Charlotte Keenan is a filmmaker and artist. Based in Castletown, Co Westmeath, she was unsuccessful in both the European and General Elections last year where she polled 1,102 votes in Midlands/North-West and 66 votes in Longford/Westmeath respectively.
Quantity surveyor, Keith McGrory hails from Buncrana in Co Donegal but lives in Waterford. He ran Keithlin Developments in Donegal before setting up McGrory Homes. From 2016 to 2018, he studied for his degree in Construction, Quantity Surveying, Sustainable Energy and Civil Engineering at WIT.
Galway based Diamaid Mulcahy is a former Chairman of National Seafood organisation, member of Irish farmer’s Association National Executive, former Board member of Western Development Commission and the Western Investment Fund Advisory panel. The Kerry native was the first candidate eliminated in the 2019 European elections in Midlands-North West after receiving 789 first preference votes, he had campaigned for the establishment of a public banking system and a health assessment on 5G technology.
Sarah Louise Mulligan has previously said being in Doonbeg to welcome Donald Trump to Clare was ‘a dream come true’. She has cited “uncontrolled illegal mass migration” as one of her key issues in the campaign. She was ejected when attending the meeting of South Dublin County Council after shouting at and approaching Cllr Dermot Looney (IND).
A lecturer in the school of mathematics and statistics at TU Dublin, Dr Cora Stack has this weekend criticised those in the legal profession and said she has suffered an amount of abuse and harassment “since I started becoming successful”. She also said she has been “stitched up” by members of An Garda Síochána.
