Boundary revision 'good for Kilcullen'

Councillor faces voting location decisionThe revised local election boundaries announced last evening are a very good thing for Kilcullen, according to local Cllr Ivan Keatley, writes Brian Byrne.

"It means that all of Kilcullen and its natural hinterland is together again, and also that its issues will likely be discussed with more involvement of officials," he says.

The Councillor was co-opted to the Fine Gael seat two years ago, with the election of his predecessor Martin Heydon to Dail Eireann.

He admits that the revision on the boundaries puts him in a position about which he has to think carefully. A significant portion of his constituency would be in Usk and south of the county, not least because of his strong GAA involvement over many years.

But he lives in Old Kilcullen, and went to school here to CPC, and in his local representative work in the last couple of years he has been very involved in town matters.

Both his party and other political and non-political groups will be studying the population numbers around the revisions. From his own perspective, he'll have to make a decision fairly soon about which of the areas he'd prefer to work from for the next elections. He won't rush into it, but there's a maximum 'window' of around a couple of months.

As for the last two years, he says the experience has been much more than he had expected. "I'm enjoying it very much. I've learned a lot about how things work in local government ... and I think I'm going to learn an awful lot more in the next 12 months."