sentences:  Athlone lost its status as a parliamentary borough under the Redistribution of Seats Act 1885, and at the 1885 general election McCarthy stood instead in the borough of Newry in County Down, where he was returned unopposed for the Irish Parliamentary Party.He was re-elected in 1886, with a comfortable majority over the Liberal Unionist Reginald Saunders, but did contest the 1892 election.McCarthy wrote various novels, plays, poetical pieces and short histories.