A Fox-hunting councillor has resigned from Sinn Féin days after the party voted to support banning the practice.
Martin McNamara was co-opted into the seat vacated by Sinn Féin TD for Galway East Louis O’Hara when Mr O’Hara was elected to the Dáil in November 2024.
Mr O’Hara said Mr McNamara ‘signed a pledge’ committing to resign from the council if he left Sinn Féin and facilitate a new co-option, but he is now refusing to do that.
‘Martin has indicated that he intends to continue as an Independent member of Galway County Council.
‘He does not have a mandate to represent the area as an Independent councillor and I wish to express my disappointment that he has refused to honour the agreement made,’ he said.
Mr McNamara is now listed as an Independent councillor on the Galway County Council website. He did not reply to a request for comment last night.
A now-deleted profile of Mr McNamara on the Sinn Féin website describes him as a ‘passionate equestrian’ who has represented Ireland at international level on the equestrian stage.
Mr McNamara is featured in articles on the website Foxhunting Life, where he is described as a ‘recent convert to the stone walls’ in a 2015 article about his local Grallagh Harriers in Moyvilla, Co. Galway.
A now-deleted profile of Mr McNamara on the Sinn Féin website describes him as a ‘passionate equestrian’
Jumped the fence: Mr McNamara is featured in articles on the website Foxhunting Life, where he is described in 2015 as a ‘recent convert to the stone walls’
Last weekend at the Sinn Féin Ard Fheis in Belfast, the party’s membership narrowly voted to support a motion to support a ban on fox-hunting.
The vote was carried after a heated debate among party members.
Sinn Féin’s Justice spokesman Matt Carthy told the Ard Fheis he opposed the motion to ban fox-hunting, saying that ‘this has been driven not by our voters but by an active campaign that has been... working with outside pressure groups’.
He added: ‘It’s not acceptable that this Ard Fheis’s clár was shared with those outside groups before members of this party had even seen it.’
The ban was supported by MEP Lynn Boylan and TD for Kildare North Réada Cronin.
The motion recognised that Sinn Féin has ‘unwavering support for rural culture and traditions, the right of farmers to defend their livestock from predators such as foxes and dogs, and the need to protect hunting and fishing activities for the purpose of obtaining food or managing species populations’.
Sinn Féin’s Justice spokesman Matt Carthy, behind and left of Mary Lou McDonald last Saturday, told the Ard Fheis he opposed the motion to ban fox-hunting
The motion outlined that the party accepts ‘that the hunting of foxes using dogs for the sole purpose of leisure is unavoidably cruel and by necessity inflicts terror, exhaustion, irrevocable injury and death on the foxes involved’.
Sinn Féin would ‘support a ban on the practice of fox-hunting with dogs for the sole purpose of leisure, and mandates the party to engage with rural communities to ensure that such a ban is introduced in a way that does not unduly impact rural life’, the motion added.
The motion also cited a Red C poll from 2019 which found that 74% of rural-dwellers oppose fox-hunting.