*James Ryan.
SINN FÉIN have confirmed the candidacy of Shannonbanks’ James Ryan for next year’s local elections.
James is the second declared Sinn Féin candidate for the 2024 local elections and will join sitting Cllr Donna McGettigan (SF) in the Shannon Municipal District. The party had anticipated running three candidates in this electoral area. He was ratified by Sinn Féin’s Ard Comhairle having been selected at a recent convention.
Now living in Westbury with his wife Jiale and two children, he met his wife while living in China for close to thirteen years where they ran an art gallery while he worked full-time in logistics.
Since returning to Ireland in 2015, James worked in Shannon in the field or airport hire but has now retrained and works as a part-time teacher. “I work mostly with DEIS schools, I do the STEM courses with parents and children, we build contraptions for them to work with, it is an interesting thing going to different schools and meeting different people. I also work with the youth diversion programme in St Mary’s, in Direct Provision centres, with Corpus Christi and all the primary schools in Limerick and a few in Clare”.
In 2018, he became a member of Sinn Féin. “I would have been a Shinner all my life,” he said. “You can’t join the party when you’re abroad, when I came home I was interested for a while but it took me some time to join. When you think about joining a political party it comes down to its policies and which agree most with my own and that’s Sinn Féin”.
Making the leap to running for the election comes down to a desire to improve the “local things,” he admitted. “Where we are in Clare, we might as well be in Limerick City, a lot of people around here in Westbury and Shannonbanks when we go around knocking on doors are asking why things aren’t being done, there is a major distance from here and Ennis, that is a geographical fact.
“Lack of maintenance for our area and our amenities has bothered me. There are no public bins here because nobody is prepared to go from Ennis to here to empty the bins. Proper maintenance of our facilities is needed. Shannonbanks is lovely from a scenic point of view but it is badly maintained,” he added.
Although Westbury is home to a Clare TD, Cathal Crowe (FF), James felt the area was “often ignored”. He stated, “I’d say Westbury, ShannonBanks the entire area is ignored in comparison to other areas, it is because of geographical distance, the depots are towards the Shannon side, people pay tax here too and we should have a higher expectation of what we get”.
Housing is another big issue in the locality, he observed. “Because of where I am, I’ve loads of relatives in Limerick City and Clare, loads of them have full-time jobs but they still can’t get to a point where they can buy a house, something has to change to properly assist people, they are on massive waiting lists and nothing seems to change. When you do all the right things and can’t get anything for it, that bothers me greatly”.
Currently Cllr McGettigan is Sinn Féin’s only representative on the Council but James is optimistic that will change and felt three councillors in Clare would be a great achievement. “I think we can offer something different, we can offer the electorate something different and the more people from Sinn Féin on the Council the better, at the moment Donna is relying on other people to support her with motions and sometimes they won’t”.
Often there can be division on whether the people of Westbury and Shannonbanks would support either Clare or Limerick when it comes to hurling and football. “My own family is divided on that one,” James admitted, his father hailing from Monaleen and his mother from Janesboro. “My father is pure Limerick City and a Limerick hurling fan, my family would be the same. I would call myself a Clare native, I have often been called ‘the Clare supporter’ by my family, I was in Croke Park in 1995 for the All-Ireland final, at the end of the day I would support Clare”.
