*Pam O’Loughlin
PAM O’Loughlin (IND) has re-entered the local election race in North Clare.
Originally selected as a candidate for the Farmers Alliance in April, “a technical hitch” has left the party red-faced as it is unable to field any local election candidates or its two declared runners for the European elections.
This prompted Pam to withdraw from the race last week but she is now back in the ring. Speaking to The Clare Echo, Pam confirmed that she is now running in the Ennistymon local electoral area as an Independent candidate. She said she made the “last minute decision due to the enormous support and encouragement to do so”.
Representatives of the Farmers Alliance have remained tight-lipped on what this exact “technical hitch” but it is speculated to be in relation to the registration of the party with The Electoral Commission.
Ennistymon native Pam was unable to go into the detail surrounding why the Farmers Alliance was unable to run its previously declared candidates. “There’s nothing wrong with Farmers Alliance. There was just a technical hitch”.
Following the murder of her younger sister Emer in 2005, Pam has spent close to two decades campaigning for justice for her sibling and has previously sought the intervention of Garda Commissioner, Drew Harris. According to Gardaí, the investigation into Emer’s murder remains “open and active”, a Crimestoppers appeal issued in November 2011 remains active.
Having lived in the United Kingdom for thirty four years, Pam returned home to Clare in 2020. She admitted that it was the pandemic which prompted her to come back. “I came back to an Ireland that I wasn’t expecting at all, I wasn’t expecting 1980s Ireland but I wasn’t exepcting the unhappiness and uncertainty for people, the financial pressures and housing struggles, people having to choose between eating and heating, I’m seeing that with ordinary families they are struggling and getting electricity bills through the door that they can’t cope with at all”.
During her time in England, she worked as a trauma and orthopaedic nurse for fourteen years and as a project manager with Nestle for close to a decade. She is now doing milk recording and farm relief work, primarily in West Clare.
She added, “I’d be looking to influence the pollution into the river and ending up in Lahinch, housing which has been delayed being built in Ennistymon due to the infrastructure, parking in town, facilities in town, that sort of thing, the lack of an A&E in Ennis, we are looking at headlines from UHL on a weekly basis”.
