Sitting councillors retain seats in Leixlip LEA with Joe Neville in top billing

The status quo has been retained in Leixlip with the three sitting councillors re-elected. Joe Neville (FG) topped the poll with 2,293 first preference votes followed by Nuala Killeen (Soc Dems) on 1,767.

Cllr Bernard Caldwell (FF) also polled strongly with 1,232 first preference votes and later reached the quota of 1,519 and was elected.

Joan O’Boyle (SF) attained 586 first preference votes while Ali Imran of the Greens achieved 194. The total poll was 6,221 and there were 149 invalid ballot papers.

Cllr Neville said: “I am delighted, thrilled to be honest. In 2014, I would have gotten 800 votes, last time I got 1,600 so then to get nearly 2,300 votes. In fairness, we worked very hard for it, but I am humbled for the people of Leixlip to show that trust in me.”

The 2,293 votes received by Cllr Neville was a whopping 774 over the required quota for the Leixlip LEA. When asked about the keys to his successful campaign he spoke about the vital nature of the work done in the five years between elections.

Cllr Neville said, “I am heavily involved in local sports clubs, heavily involved in working with the residents association, director of the youth and community centre, and I am on the Board of Management in Confey school. No matter what sort of campaign you are doing, if you are not doing the other stuff you won’t be able to get that sort of a vote and I genuinely mean that. I worked hard during the campaign to get a vote, but at the same time the work in those five years really goes towards that.”

That being said, there was plenty of knocking on doors and shaking hands to be done in the lead-up to the 2024 Local Election and the Fine Gael councillor said that two issues kept cropping up when speaking to the people of Leixlip.

“It is very simple and very clear. One of the two main local issues is the dereliction of Leixlip village, there is a council owned site there and there are some privately owned sites too. Another key issue locally was access to Castletown House because people have no real access now that the car park has been taken away. They were the local issues and the only national issue that I met at the doors was immigration, which came up as a key issue for people. It only came up intermittently, but it was the only national issue that did,” Cllr Neville said.

As well as the central issues of the people, the councillor has his own areas of focus following his election. He said, “One thing I have been very focused on over the last number of years has been highlighting the lack of community capital investment from Kildare County Council into Leixlip.

“I have shown numbers that there hasn’t been the same level of community capital infrastructure invested in Leixlip and Celbridge over the last 10 years. I am now focused on delivering one if not two major projects in the area. Be that in a swimming pool in the north-east of the county or the development of The Wonderful Barn.”