Timmy Conway | |
|---|---|
| Senator | |
| In office 13 May 1982 – 25 April 1987 | |
| Constituency | Industrial and Commercial Panel |
| In office 8 October 1981 – 13 May 1982 | |
| Constituency | Nominated by the Taoiseach |
| Personal details | |
| Born | (1942-10-27)27 October 1942 (age 82) County Kildare, Ireland |
| Political party | |
Timothy Conway (born 27 October 1942)[1] is an Irish former politician fromNaas inCounty Kildare. An accountant and long-serving local councillor, he served for six years as asenator in the 1980s and later contested two general elections. In the course of his political career he switched party twice, moving from theLabour Party to theProgressive Democrats and then toFine Gael.
Conway joined theLabour Party as a trainee accountant in the 1970s, and was later elected as a member ofKildare County Council. He was Labour's director of elections in theKildare constituency at the1981 general election, after which he wasnominated by the Taoiseach,Garret FitzGerald, as a member of the15th Seanad. The appointment was explained by the Labour Party's secretary, Seamus Scally, as an organisational one: Conway would be responsible for organising and improving the finances of the party in theLeinster area.[2]
The following year he was elected to the16th Seanad, topping the poll on theIndustrial and Commercial Panel.[3] He was re-elected in 1983 to the17th Seanad, this time coming second in the first-preference votes behindFianna Fáil'sEoin Ryan.[4]
He left the Labour Party in 1986 to become a founder member of the newProgressive Democrats party (PDs). He did not contest the 1987 elections to the18th Seanad because the Progressive Democrats policy at the time called for the abolition of the Seanad. At the1989 general election he stood unsuccessfully as a Progressive Democrats candidate in the Kildare constituency, and he was unsuccessful again when he stood in the newKildare North constituency in1997.[5]
Conway remained a member of Kildare County Council and of Naas Town Council, where he initiated the town's twinning with the American city ofOmaha, Nebraska. He was one of three of the town's nine councillors whose council-funded trip to Omaha was described by another councillor as a "gravy train".[6] He was twice chairman of the county council, and served as Mayor of Naas from 2002 to 2003. However, in June 2003 he left the Progressive Democrats to joinFine Gael,[7] and in the2004 local elections he lost his seats on both the town council and the county council.[8][5][9]