Family affair... Offaly councillor's son seeks seat in Laois

IF rookie council candidate Charlie Hackett needs any campaign advice he does not have to look very far – his father is a councillor and his mother is a senator and junior minister.

The oldest son of Offaly-based Cllr Mark Hackett and Minister of State Pippa Hackett, Charlie is the youngest Green Party candidate in the country and the second youngest in the entire election.

The 20-year-old University of Limerick media student has jumped the county boundary and is running in the Graiguecullen Portarlington electoral area, a sprawling council district in Laois which stretches from the Offaly boundary down to Co Carlow.

Cllr Mark Hackett said his son's candidacy was partly accidental and occurred when the Green Party member originally slated to run, John Holland, could not contest the election for family reasons.

“We didn't want to leave the [area] vacant, we wanted to give people the choice to vote [Green] so Charlie stood up and said he'd do it and we said 'Good man Charlie',” Cllr Hackett explained.

In an unusual turn of events, both father and son are on election ballot papers for the first time.

Cllr Hackett is a member of Offaly County Council for the Edenderry electoral area since 2020 after being co-opted to the seat formerly held by his wife Pippa.

Pippa Hackett was elected to the council at the last local poll in 2019 (pictured with her family below at the count in May that year) and subsequently took a seat in Seanad Eireann in an unopposed bye-election to fill a vacancy left when the Green Party's Grace O'Sullivan won a seat in the European Parliament.

Then in 2020 she was appointed as a Minister of State when the Green Party went into Government with Fianna Fail and Fine Gael.

She has been taking some time out from ministerial duties to assist both her husband and son on the campaign trail in Offaly and Laois.

Cllr Hackett, whose electoral area includes the Offaly side of Portarlington, has been doing his best for Charlie too.

On Thursday evening he explained: “I drove him to Emo this morning and left him there with his bike and he canvassed the whole way back to Portarlington on the bike. That's the way he's doing it because he doesn't have a licence yet. And I was thinking it's a nice way of getting about when the weather is lovely.”

The Hacketts have a farm between Geashill and Cloneygowan and Charlie's siblings have been helping their father's bid to retain his council seat in an unusual way.

In keeping with the Green Party commitment to biodiversity, young Poppy, Heidi and George Hackett put insects on their father's election posters.

But among the many bees and butterflies there are just 10 posters featuring spiders and Cllr Hackett has issued a challenge to the children of the area: “Kids have to find the ones with the spiders.”