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Constituencies
Dublin Central
Mary Lou McDonald

Mary Lou McDonald

Sinn Féin

Incumbent :

Main message to voters:

I will help to deliver a 'Fair Recovery' to the people of Dublin Central. The injustice of a road to recovery directed at one group in society cannot be tolerated. A vote for me and a vote for Sinn Féin to govern will ensure that Dublin Central will, at last, have a real voice in government.

Election history:

TD for Dublin Central 2011-present. MEP for Dublin 2004-2009

Priorities:

Housing/homelessness: Sinn Féin will ensure 100,000 new social & affordable houses and commit an additional spend of €2.2bn to the crisis.
Healthcare: Increased spending on health, moving from a failing two tier health system to a universal health care system free at point of delivery.
Water Charges must be abolished. Under a Sinn Féin government, this will happen.We have stopped Water Charges in the north & we will abolish them here

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Frequenty Asked Questions

What is WhichCandidate?

WhichCandidate is a ‘voting advice application’ that allows voters to compare their own policy views with those of the candidates standing for election.

It aims to inform voters about the policy positions of candidates and to help voters to make a more informed voting decision.

How does it work?

A set of relevant policy issues are selected by the research team in advance of the election. Election candidates are contacted to complete a questionnaire on these issues. Each participating candidate is given a public profile on the website, incorporating their answers to the questionnaire.

Voters who visit the website are asked the same set of questions, and their answers are compared with the answers of the candidates. A customised results page is then presented to each user, containing a ranking of candidates ordered by how closely their answers match.

How is the ranking calculated?

Rankings of candidates are based on the ‘percentage match’ with the user. This is the percentage of issues on which the candidate has the same position as the user, out of all the issues on which the user expressed an opinion.

For example: a user expresses an opinion on 10 issues, and on 5 of those issues the user’s position is the same as Candidate X. In this case, the percentage match between the user and Candidate X is 50%.

Some issues are more important to me than others. Can this be taken into account?

You first select the issues that are important to you, and you are then presented with questions related to those issues. You will only be matched with candidates on those issues. In addition, if there are any specific questions that you are not interested in, you can simply select 'no opinion' and they will be excluded from calculation.

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Any queries or feedback on WhichCandidate can be sent to Rory Costello at the Department of Politics and Public Administration, University of Limerick rory.costello@ul.ie