{"id":488073,"date":"2026-06-07T21:27:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-07T21:27:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/488073\/"},"modified":"2026-06-07T21:27:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-07T21:27:09","slug":"former-ballina-senator-ernie-caffrey-has-died","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/488073\/","title":{"rendered":"Former Ballina Senator Ernie Caffrey has died"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Former Ballina Senator and Mayo County Councillor Ernie Caffrey has passed away.<\/p>\n<p>In a statement this evning, Tanaiste and Fine Gael leader Simon Harris said Mr. Caffrey served his community with distinction for many years.<\/p>\n<p>Elected to Seanad \u00c9ireann on the Industrial and Commercial Panel in 1997, he served in the upper house until 2002. He also served on Mayo County Council and Ballina Urban District Council.<\/p>\n<p>He ran as a Fine Gael candidate in four successive general elections between 1989 and 2002, but never won a seat.<\/p>\n<p>In 2023, both he and his daughter met with then US President Joe Biden during his visit to the North Mayo Heritage Centre on his visit to Ireland in April of that year.<\/p>\n<p>Ernie presented Biden with a brick from the fireplace of the president\u2019s ancestral Blewitt family homestead in Ballina.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u00a0 Former Ballina Senator and Mayo County Councillor Ernie Caffrey has passed away. In a statement this evning,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":488074,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":["post-488073","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488073","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=488073"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488073\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/488074"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=488073"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=488073"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=488073"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}