Fianna Fáil councillor Daryl Barron has been elected the 359th Lord Mayor of Dublin, taking up the role from outgoing mayor Ray McAdam. The role is for a fixed 12-month term, and Mr Barron, who has been a councillor for Donaghmede since 2019, was widely tipped for the position ahead of the election. This is because the Lord Mayor role is rotated between councillors of the four parties making up Dublin City Council’s (DCC) ruling group – Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil, Labour and the Green
Party – under an agreement reached after the 2024 elections. Supported by councillors from those parties, plus several independents, he was elected with 33 votes. The position of Deputy Lord Mayor went to the Labour Party’s Alison Field with 32 votes. Speaking in the council chamber tonight following his election, Mr Barron said the coming year would be about “restoring the trust” between citizen and council. Mirroring language heard from the council’s chief executive in recent years, he committed to bring the city “back to
basics” in terms of service delivery. Mr Barron’s intends to focus on three main pillars for his mayoralty, with the first labelled ‘A cleaner and safer Dublin’. “We cannot preach about a grand vision for a modern European capital if our citizens do not feel safe through it,” he said, adding that he would work “hand-in-hand” with An Garda Síochána. Mr Barron’s wife, Orla, is a member of the force. “Security is not a luxury, it is a basic essential,” he said, adding that the
council would also continue to increase the budget for street cleaning under his watch. His second focus is on addressing vacancy, dereliction and the housing crisis, saying that the level of dereliction blighting the capital was a “moral and economic failure”. He wants the council to “aggressively expand” the direct building of public and affordable housing on council-owned sites, and plans to reinstate the council’s homelessness subcommittee. The forum sat from 2020 to 2024 and was chaired by Green Party councillor Hazel Chu, but was
not reinstated following the local elections in 2024. Instead, DCC housing committee chair Deirdre Heney chose to place an increased focus on workshops, and homelessness issues were instead bundled in with regular housing meetings. The final pillar Mr Barron raised was about ‘empowering our youth and honouring our communities’. He said this would celebrate the “unsung heroes, volunteers, grassroots organisers and local sports leaders” of Dublin. A group of councillors known as the Progressive Alliance, made up of Sinn Féin, the Social Democrats, People Before
Profit and several independents, put forward Social Democrat councillor Jesslyn Henry for the role of Lord Mayor. She received 21 votes from the chamber, while their nomination for Deputy Lord Mayor, Sinn Féin’s Edel Moran, got 24. In an emotional farewell to the chamber, outgoing mayor Ray McAdam said it had been the “honour of my life” to serve as Dublin’s first citizen, and paid tribute to his family. Councillors of all political stripes complimented Mr McAdam’s energy and enthusiasm as Lord Mayor, with independent
councillor Christy Burke remarking that he was so busy, “at times I thought they’d cloned you”. Funded by the Local Democracy Reporting Scheme
Daryl Barron, Lord Mayor of Dublin, Ray McAdam, Alison Field, Donaghmede, Dublin City Council, Fianna Fáil, Labour, Fine Gael, Green Party, housing crisis, homelessness subcommittee, street cleaning