Mayor Johnny Kenehan

Welcome from Mayor Johnny Kenehan

Welcome to John Kenehan’s section of the Labour Website.

Cllr. Johnny Kenehan has served 3 consecutive terms on Thurles Town Council. He is married to Teresa they have five children, 2 girls and 3 boys. Johnny is currently a mature student in the Tipperary Institute in Thurles doing a four year fulltime course in Social and Community Studies in keeping with his political activities.

Formerly employed in Erin Foods, Thurles for 24 years he represented the workforce at the highest level as a Worker Director on the Irish Sugar Board, Johnny has the distinction of being the only Erin Foods employee in the history of the sugar company to achieve that honour. A great honour he says, that was bestowed on him by the faith and support of his fellow workers.

It was through the trade union movenment within Erin Foods that Johnny got involved in local politics as he held a number of positions in SIPTU at local level, regional and national.

He has been elected Mayor of Thurles Town Council on four occasions and was instrumental as Mayor in 2003 to put in place funding for the new Leisure Centre and 200 seat Theatre and new state of the art Library, all of which was completed in 2008. Proving to be a great addition to the town of Thurles.
Johnny's focus is now on job creation as Thurles has been badly hit by closures up to a 1,000 jobs lost in the last three years.

Johnny was vocal on the issues of health when a new out of hours doctor service was introduced in Thurles called Shannondoc. Johnny identified an number of areas where there were deficiences in the service and through intense lobbying and public support made major changes to the service.He was also outspoken on the voting irregularites in the Thurles area at the last local elections which featured on the national media and led to garda investigation into irregularities where hundreds of fictitious people were falsely registered. This in return led to national review of the registration procedures.