In November 2023, at Limerick’s Hunt Museum, John Moran ran into local businesswoman Helen O’Donnell. She would, in time, become his biggest rival for the new role of directly elected mayor of the city and county. O’Donnell was steeped in Fine Gael. In 1984, then Helen O’Connor, she had married the long-serving Limerick East TD Tom O’Donnell. He was 58, she was 23. “Tom would never have encouraged me to go into politics, because he had too much experience of it,” she says. Still, the former minister thought there was one political role his wife was well suited to. “He…

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