Van der Spek aims to win Labour’s first county council seat

Tackling the ongoing housing shortage and a drive for urban renewal are the twin issues Labour’s candidate hopes will resonate with voters as he seeks to win the party’s first ever seat on Cavan County Council.

Liam van der Speak was confirmed as the only local candidate for the Labour Party in the June 7 election. Chaired by former Cavan town councillor Des Cullen, the party’s selection convention was held in the Farnham Arms Hotel last Thursday at which Mr van der Spek was the only nominee.

The Cavan Town native is standing in the Cavan-Belturbet Municipal District (MD), and the housing crisis is key to his campaign.

“It’s a national emergency that half of the country feel locked out of realistically being able to buy a home. It’s holding back our local economy and national economy. I don’t think the government grips the seriousness of that problem,” he told the Celt.

In terms of addressing that issue in Cavan County Council, the Labour man acknowledges: “There’s limits of course to what a councillor can do on one county council, but I’d certainly do everything I could to encourage the construction of social, affordable, and private housing.”

Mr van der Spek has first hand experience of the issue that plagues first time buyers in particular.

“I’m in my late 20s and my financial position is a little bit above average - so I’m lucky in that sense - and I think there are many people worse off than me - but looking from my own perspective it’s still prohibitive in terms of what you can afford.

“The costs are really a big problem. We saw a report recently how house prices continue to rise in Cavan, and even more so in the big cities,” he says in reference to the Daft report that revealed there were less than 10,500 homes available for purchase nationally at the start of last month; a record low.

Mr van der Spek also pledges to focus on the need for urban renewal. He volunteers that his party was part of the Fine Gael/Labour government which dissolved the town councils nationally in 2014 - including three in County Cavan in Cavan Town, Belturbet and Cootehill - and he views that as “a mistake”.

“I think then we lost some of our focus on our towns. We have such a beautiful county with such beautiful scenery but I think it’s important that we have beautiful towns as well. We had a pilot programme in Cavan Town to have pedestrianisation - I think that should be looked at again.”

He suggests looking at increased outdoor dining and socialising during the warmer months.

“A lot of it might not cost the moon or the stars either,” he suggests.

“When we go to other European cities or towns we think: Wow, that was really nice - they had great outdoor dining, they had lovely walkways. We don’t say: gosh it was great they had loads of cars running through the centre of town. We appreciate it in other places but we don’t think of the value of it at home.”

Mr van der Spek is standing for a seat in the Cavan-Belturbet MD, but they have no candidates running in either the Bailieborough-Cootehill or Ballyjamesduff MDs. The Celt puts it to the Labour man that it doesn’t reflect well on his party that they didn’t do the groundwork between elections to ensure they could field candidates in each of the local authority constituencies.

“The party in a lot of ways doesn’t think big enough,” he concedes.

“We are a smaller party now. We have been a bigger party in the past; there’s no reason we can’t be bigger again. We have to think in a national way - we have to be looking to represent the whole country. That’s something we have not always been good at in recent years, so we should have that ambition.”

Mr van der Spek last stood for Labour in the 2020 General Election, when he earned 983 first preference votes, losing his deposit, before being eliminated at Count 5. He also contested the 2019 local elections, when he received 591 first preference votes as a candidate in the Cavan-Belturbet area. Again he was eliminated at Count 5 with transfers bringing him up to 761, a total significantly shy of the 1,106 secured by Damien Brady (SF) who finished seventh, and 1,159 achieved by Peter McVitty (FG) who claimed the sixth and final seat.

“It would be certainly a first, but I don’t think it’s out of the bounds of possibility. That’s the pitch I’m going to make - to have that urban focus and centre left voice on Cavan County Council and I think it’s entirely possible I could end up there.”