Quill was a councillor on Cork County Council at the time of the June 1927 general election, having been elected in 1925. It has been said that he was recruited into the party by Labour politician and fellow Clondrohid native T. J. Murphy. Quill was 26 years old at the time of the general election on 9 June 1927 and was one of 44 Labour candidates in total. While campaigning, Quill described himself as a "temperate man". In June 1927, at a meeting in North Cork, Quill outlined what he believed the Labour Party stood for. Referring to the level of unemployment, he spoke about the "right to work" and the government's perceived failing of "humbler people" over the "well-to-do class". Quill was elected as a Labour Party TD for the Cork North constituency at the June 1927 general election, receiving 18% of first preference votes. Slogans, such as 'Be Labour This Time' and 'Away With Slums & Mud Cabins' were featured on his election posters. He was the youngest member of the 5th Dail. He spoke against the Public Safety Bill 1927 in August 1927. During a finance committee debate on old age pensions in July 1927, he decried what he described as the "strict and harsh manner" of some pensions officers. Quill lost his seat at the September 1927 general election, serving only three months as a TD. He received 4,123 first preference votes. T. D. Keating of the ITGWU said that it was regrettable that Quill was not re-elected. The number of Labour candidates almost halved (from 44 to 28). Speaking on the heavy defeat for Labour in the September 1927 election, T. J. Murphy regretted that the party had lost candidates, like Quill, who he described as "young men of the ability and honesty of Mr. Quill, who had been defeated in North Cork by a mere handful of votes, after making a marvellous fight against a combination of influences".