Cyprian Brady

Cyprian Brady (born 26 June 1962) is an Irish former Fianna Fáil politician. He was a Teachta Dála (TD) for the Dublin Central constituency from 2007 to 2011. Brady is a former civil servant who for 20 years ran the constituency office of the former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern.

Political career In 2002, Brady was nominated by the Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, as a member of the 22nd Seanad.

2007 general election In late 2005, Brady and his brother Royston, a former Lord Mayor of Dublin and unsuccessful candidate for the European Parliament, were both reported to be in contention for a Fianna Fáil nomination in the Dublin Central constituency. Although Dublin Central was the constituency of the then Taoiseach Bertie Ahern and was considered a strong Fianna Fáil constituency there was stiff competition from other parties. In 2002 the second Fianna Fáil TD Dermot Fitzpatrick had been elected in 2002 with a narrow margin of just 79 votes over the Sinn Féin candidate Nicky Kehoe.

The rivalry between the brothers led to a public call from a third brother, Fulton Brady, to "put an end to it". Royston was not one of the four contenders nominated for at the selection conference in March 2006, when Cyprian Brady and Councillor Mary Fitzpatrick were selected as Ahern's two running-mates. Fitzpatrick was the daughter of the outgoing TD Dermot Fitzpatrick.

At the 2007 general election, held under Ireland's single transferable vote system, Brady polled just 939 first preference votes (2.7%) in the first count. However he was elected on the fourth count, due in large part to a pre-arranged electoral strategy seeing large transfers from his running mate, the Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, and became only the second ever TD (after Brian O'Higgins) to be elected with less than 1,000 first-preference votes.

His election became the subject of a public interest (in large part because his running mate was the sitting Taoiseach), covered in national newspapers and on the RTÉ Radio 1 news programme Drivetime and on the weekly Documentary on One which had been covering the campaigns of the three female candidates in the constituency.

Mary Fitzpatrick, daughter of the outgoing Fianna Fáil TD and the third Fianna Fáil candidate in the 4-seat constituency, had received 1,725 first-preference votes, but whereas 2,403 of Ahern's surplus votes were transferred to Brady, only 1,362 went to Fitzpatrick. Ahern's election agent Chris Wall blamed Fitzpatrick, saying "She was asked not to do this sort of thing. Having then done it, she therefore effectively set in train a motion she wasn't going to be able to stop." He lost his seat having received 1,637 votes (4.7%).