Seán Maloney (Irish politician)

Seán Maloney (born 9 January 1945) is an Irish former politician from Letterkenny, County Donegal. Formerly a member of the Labour Party, he joined Fine Gael in 2000.^[1]

Maloney unsuccessfully contested the 1992 general election as a Labour Party candidate in the Donegal North-East constituency, but in the subsequent elections to Seanad Éireann he was elected to the Labour Panel to the 20th Seanad.^[2] He stood unsuccessfully in the Donegal North-East by-election in April 1996, and he was not elected at the 1997 general election, when his share of the first-preference votes fell from over 11% in 1992 to 5.5%.^[1]

He was defeated in subsequent Seanad elections, but in the local elections in 1991 he was elected a member of both Letterkenny Town Council and of Donegal County Council. Sometime after 1999 he left the Labour Party and joined Fine Gael, standing as a Fine Gael candidate for Donegal North-East in the 2002 general election, when he won over 10% of the first-preference votes but was not elected. He did not contest any further elections.^[1]

In 1995, he advised the then Minister for the Arts, Culture and the Gaeltacht Michael D. Higgins to view a site in Letterkenny in exchange for a lift to a Labour Party function in Donegal. Higgins visited the Rectory Field, declared it the best site for a theatre he had ever seen and approved a £1.5 million grant the following February for what would become An Grianán Theatre.^[3]

He is a brother of Eamonn Maloney who served in Dáil Éireann (2011–2016).^{[citation needed]}