2014 Seanad by-election

The Cultural and Educational Panel (Irish: An Rolla Saíochta agus Oideachais) is one of five Vocational Panels which together elect 43 of the 60 members of Seanad Éireann, the upper house of the Oireachtas (the legislature of Ireland). The Cultural and Educational Panel elects five Senators, at least two of whom must come from the Oireachtas members' nominees and another three must come from the nominating bodies' nominees.

Note: The columns in this table are used only for presentational purposes, and no significance should be attached to the order of columns.

While Oireachtas members and city and county council members have a franchise for general elections for the Seanad, in by-elections it is confined to Oireachtas members.

Fine Gael's Deirdre Clune resigned from the Seanad after been elected to the European Parliament for the South constituency at the 2014 European Parliament election. The by-election to fill the casual vacancy had 225 Oireachtas members as voters; nomination by nine members was required to be added to the ballot.

Gerard Craughwell, former president of the Teachers' Union of Ireland, put himself forward in August 2014 as an independent candidate, initially a symbolic gesture to protest against the usual practice of the government using its parliamentary majority to secure the election of its chosen candidate. Craughwell secured nomination from members of the technical group and Fianna Fáil.

On 12 September 2014, Heather Humphreys, the Minister for Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht wrote to John McNulty, a businessman who had run unsuccessfully for Donegal County Council in the 2014 local elections, offering him a place on the board of the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA); he accepted on 15 September, and before nominations closed on 18 September Fine Gael nominated him for the by-election to fill the Seanad vacancy. Opposition politicians protested that McNulty's IMMA appointment was abusive and had been made solely to bolster his eligibility for the Cultural and Educational Panel; Humphreys took responsibility for the appointment and refused to state whether others had pressed her to make it. McNulty resigned from the IMMA board on 25 September, stating its rules prohibited board members from running for election. On 23 February 2016, in a televised debate before the 2016 general election, Enda Kenny appeared to concede for the first time that it was his decision to nominate McNulty to IMMA, later backtracking somewhat.

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