Councillor Ray McAdam has become the 358th Lord Mayor of Dublin.
He is the third Fine Gael politician in a row to hold the position in a first for the party.
Mr McAdam received the backing of 34 of the 63 city councillors, with Sinn Féin’s Kourtney Kenny securing 22 votes.
Born in Co Cavan and raised in Co Fermanagh, Mr McAdam studied philosophy and political science at Trinity College Dublin where he joined Young Fine Gael. He was elected to Dublin City Council in 2009 at the age of 25, becoming the first Fine Gael representative in the north inner city in more than two decades. He has retained his seat in each election since, topping the poll last year.
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In his year ahead as Lord Mayor he said he wanted to “shine a light on the challenges facing the city, but I also hope to bring people together in order to come forward with solutions to those challenges”.
Capitalising on the renewed focus on the north inner city through the recent Dublin City Taskforce report, Mr McAdam said he would be concentrating on the reuse of vacant and derelict buildings, using the compulsory purchase process where building owners were “squandering” the city’s resources by leaving properties to decay.
He also said he wanted to see the council develop “vacancy maps” to identify the greatest opportunities for the reuse of buildings.
The implementation of the council’s sports plan was also vital to the development of the city, he said. “I think given the challenges we have in the city in terms of integration and inclusion sport can be the great unifier.”
He said he wanted to create better opportunities for people with disabilities “in politics and business and entrepreneurship” and for young people to have a greater voice in shaping the city, with the potential for youth representation on the council’s strategic policy committees.
To drive forward these aims he plans to establish the “Lord Mayor’s Commission on Dublin 2050”, he said.
“I want to utilise the strategy that’s been adopted through the city-centre taskforce to put together a long-term vision in terms of how we want the city centre to feel and to look by 2050,” he said.
“I think it’s an appropriate time as we come to the end of the first quarter of the century that we look to what we want to achieve for the city centre by the middle point of the 21st century.”
In a more immediate time frame, by the end of this term he wanted to see a statue in O’Connell Street to commemorate the “women of the revolution” who were instrumental in securing Ireland’s independence.
“Engineers are finalising a number of options at the moment, but I would love to see it in front of GPO,” he said.
Mr McAdam succeeds Emma Blain, who took over from James Geoghegan last December following his election to the Dáil.
