Claim of Sinn Fein breakthrough on Ards and North Down - the only council where the party has no councillors - rubbished by unionists

Ards and North Down Borough Council is the only one in Northern Ireland with no Sinn Fein members on it.

It was formed in 2014 out of a merger of Ards Borough Council and North Down Borough Council, and has been Sinn Fein-free ever since.

And prior to the merger, neither of the two smaller councils had a single Sinn Fein member either.

Now party president Mary Lou McDonald says this looks set to change.

She said: “We are very hopeful that we can make a breakthrough in councils that have no or have very little Sinn Fein representation.

“That includes North Down and Ards Council where Noel Sands can make history by taking the first ever Sinn Fein council seat in the Ards peninsula.”

Alderman Angus Carson, representing the Ards Peninsula for the UUP (who, at age 75 and with 22 years’ service, is not standing for re-election), said his personal view is: “I don’t think they’ll break any ground. They’ve been trying to get in for a long time."

Come May 19 – the day after the vote – the council’s “unionist family will be clapping their hands” to learn that the authority remains without a Sinn Fein councillor. And if he is wrong, he joked, he will buy this reporter dinner.

Meanwhile Bangor DUP man Alistair Cathcart said: “The only chance they’d have is to run in the peninsula… but that’s SDLP, and Joe Boyle [the sole nationalist member of the council] is well-liked.

"They ran a few years ago someone who is known locally, and was well-liked, and she didn’t get elected, so I don’t really see it changing.”

Here are the results from the last election, in 2019:

• DUP

33.4% of first-preference votes, 14 councillors

• Alliance

22.2%, 10 councillors

• UUP

17.8%, eight councillors

• Green

10.2%, three councillors

• Independent

8.6%, three councillors

• SDLP

3.2%, one councillor

• TUV

1.4%, one councillor

• SF

0.5%

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