There will be many new faces elected to Kildare County Council this weekend

Whatever else happens when County Kildare voters go to their polling stations to elect a new county council, there will be many new faces when the new local authority meets for the first time in late July.

No less than 11 councillors have come and gone since the last election took place in May 2019.

Unusually, one of those became a councillor without actually being elected and left well before the June 7 polling day.

That was the Green Party’s Colm Kenny. He was nominated for the seat held by the poll topping Vincent P Martin, who was nearly elected on the first count in his first tilt at winning a KCC seat in 2019.

Kenny’s place was in turn taken by fellow Naas resident Bob Quinn, who will be the GP’s standard bearer this time in Naas.

Martin later departed to Seanad Éireann having unsuccessfully sought a Dáil seat in the subsequent general election.

Something similar happened with Patricia Ryan. Representing Sinn Féin, she got the last number of votes of those elected form the Kildare local electoral area - but like Martin, she was successful in the general election. In her case she was the best performing candidate in Kildare South and was first home.

Her place on KCC was taken by Noel Connolly.

Rathangan’s Anne Connolly (Fianna Fáil) is also standing down.

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Vanessa Liston, elected for the Green Party in 2019 but was latterly an independent, won’t be contesting either.

Both Liston and independent Ide Cussen were elected in the Celbridge area and Cussen also won’t be running on this occasion.

Veteran Fine Gael politician Brendan Weld, who represented the Clane area, is also a non runner and he got more first preference votes than any other Clane area candidate in 2019.

Another name missing from the ballot paper will be Fiona McLoughlin Healy, one time Fine Gael politician, who ran as an independent in the Newbridge area last time and comfortably exceeded the quota on the first count.

The Labour Party’s Ciara Galvin has already bowed out. She was the last candidate elected in Celbridge and did so without reaching a quota. Rupert Heather was nominated to replace her on KCC and he is running.

Another absentee will be solicitor Mark Stafford, who was appointed county registrar in Louth about a year ago. He was replaced by Kildare town’s Paddy Curran, who will seek to hold the seat for Fine Gael.

Mark Wall was elected in 2019 but subsequently won a senate seat and was replaced by Mark Leigh, who will be bidding to hold on to the seat he was nominate to.