THE VOTES HAVE been cast, the tallies have been done, and now the results are starting to come in.
It’s a bad day for the government parties with both Fine Gael and Labour losing seats in constituencies across the country. Fianna Fáil have surged, Sinn Féin has had some strong results, and smaller parties and independent candidates have had a hugely successful election.
Join us as we follow the news, results, reaction, winners and losers in the 2016 General Election. Our earlier liveblog from Saturday can be read here.
Well, this has been quite the day so far, hasn’t it?
This is Christine Bohan (still) here with you into the evening for what has been a dramatic election count day. Got any thoughts or comments? Let me know in the comments section, tweet me or mail me at christine@thejournal.ie.
Daragh O’Brien has been elected in Dublin Fingal, making him the first Fianna Fáil TD in Dublin after the party lost all their TDs in the capital over the past five years.
Clare Daly looks likely to be elected soon having finished in second place, but Minister for Children James Reilly is in trouble – he’s currently in 6th position in the five-seat constituency.
Gerry Adams has been talking about his party’s result – and in particular whether Sinn Féin would have done better if his performance in the televised debates had been stronger.
The party looks set to bring home around 27 seats - a significant improvement on its showing in 2011 when it returned 14 seats.
Speaking to Sharon Ní Bheoláin, Adams said:
Well I think if you were putting that question [about his performance] to Enda Kenny or the Labour leader, you might have a point.
Obviously, you can always improve… We’ve increased our vote by 50%. This is the start of a realignment of politics. Some people lent their votes from Fianna Fáil to Fine Gael… some of them went back.
Stephen Donnelly is the first TD to be elected in Wicklow, topping the poll with 14,348 votes. All three sitting Social Democrats TDs have now been returned to the Dáil and all three have topped the poll in their constituencies.
Here’s where the parties stand right now with 20 of the seats decided:
Fianna Fáil have won a lot of the early seats, but Fine Gael and Sinn Féin will see their numbers increase over the course of the evening.
In Galway East, Seán Canney (Ind) and Ann Rabbitte (FF) have both just been elected on the second count. Canney had topped the poll with 19% of the vote, while Rabbitte benefited from a large proportion of redistributed votes when running mate Colm Keaveney was eliminated.
Some constituencies haven’t even returned a first count yet but Laois is already finished. The constituency had just six candidates running for three seats and the final result threw up no surprises (you can read more here about why it was so predictable).
Seán Fleming (FF), Charlie Flanagan (FG) and Brian Stanley (SF) have all been deemed elected.
Michael Lowry topped the poll in Tipperary, in what was perhaps one of the only predictable results in what has been an unpredictable election. But what does he make of his victory?
“I did what Kilkenny never could, I’ve done the five in a row,” he told Newstalk a few minutes ago. “Tipperary has had a love for me for over 28 years now”.
Regarding the speculation at the start of the campaign about whether he would be needed to support Fine Gael in government, Lowry said he was ‘amused’ by it:
It was always irrelevant. I was amused at the amount of publicity it got – I predicted it would be irrelevant, other politicians were using me for their own purposes.
It’s been a very bad election for the government. Fine Gael made a major mistake in their strategy – they said they were a safe hand on the economy, but then in week one they went with auction politics and lost all credibility.
Joanna Tuffy, one of the Labour TDs who have lost their seats today, has a convincing theory about why she lost:
What do you do when you get to the polling station and decide you don’t like the look of any of the candidates?
For one Dublin West voter, the answer was simple: write ‘Conor McGregor’ at the top of the list, draw your own box and add a tick. Nice try.
Mary Lou McDonald has been elected in Dublin Central after topping the poll and getting almost twice the number of votes of her nearest competitor, Paschal Donohoe.
And speaking of poll-toppers: Leo Varadkar has just been elected in Dublin West
Fianna Fáil’s bright young hope Jack Chambers looks likely to be elected there shortly, while Labour leader Joan Burton, Socialist Party’s Ruth Coppinger and Sinn Féin’s Paul Donnelly battle it out for the third and fourth seats. There are currently just 22 votes between Burton and Coppinger.
Anyone at the RDS count centre lose some jewellery?
Richard Boyd Barrett becomes the first TD to be elected in Dún Laoghaire and the first AAA-PBP TD elected to the 32nd Dáil.
No being-hoisted-up-onto-shoulders or wild cheering at the countcentre, though – just a round of applause and some big smiles.
Galway East is the second constituency to fill all of its seats:
Big news for the Green Party: deputy leader Catherine Martin has just been elected in Dublin Rathdown, becoming the party’s first TD in this Dáil (and the first since they lost every one of their Dáil seats in the 2011 general election).
Here’s an interview we did with her last year, soon after she was elected as a councillor.
This has been a good election for the Greens. Leader Eamon Ryan is still in the running to take a seat in the hugely competitive Dublin Bay South, and the party has exceeded the 2% of the vote it needed in order to secure State funding.
The other big news from Dublin Rathdown: In a shock result, former Minister for Justice Alan Shatter has been eliminated.
The Fine Gael TD missed out on the final seat after being beaten into fourth place in the 3-seater by Shane Ross, his own running mate Josepha Madigan, and Catherine Martin of the Green Party.
Shatter had been one of the most high profile Fine Gael TDs, but had resigned as justice minister in 2014 following the Guerin report into alleged malpractice in An Garda Síochána.
He had been elected to the Dáil at his first attempt in 1981, when he was just 29 years old. He served as a TD for 30 of the last 35 years and before today, he had only lost one of 10 Dáil elections, in 2002 – when he was defeated by the Green party’s Eamon Ryan.
Another Labour TD bites the dust: Joe Costello has been eliminated in Dublin Central after finishing in 7th place in the 3-seater.
Costello had served as a TD from 1992 until 1997 and from 2002 until today. His elimination will see his 2,345 distributed among the remaining candidates, in what has become a tight battle for the remaining two seats (Mary Lou McDonald was elected there several hours ago after topping the poll).
Taoiseach Enda Kenny has just been elected on the first count in Mayo with 13,318 votes, exceeding the quota of 12,730.
There has been no sign of him all day – perhaps unsurprisingly, given the results so far – but my colleague Orla Ryan, who is in the Mayo count centre, says that he is due to speak to the media shortly.
Bit of info, stats fans: Enda Kenny has now won all 13 Dáil elections since the by-election of 1975, when he took over after the death of his father Henry.
He entered the Dáil at the age of 24 and has now spent almost 41 years as a TD in Mayo. He will be the most electorally successful – as an individual, that is, not as a party leader – and longest-serving member of the next Dáil.
Let’s have a look at where the parties are at right now:
With 34 seats decided so far out of 158 (around 21% of the total number of seats), Fianna Fáil are still in the lead with 13 seats, followed by Fine Gael (8), SF and Independents (both on 4) and Social Democrats (3).
Perhaps most striking: Labour has still not returned a single TD.
Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams has topped the poll in 5-seater Louth on the first count.
With 10,661 votes, he is fewer than 600 votes away from the quota.
Adams looks likely to bring in his running mate Imelda Munster too, but Labour’s Ged Nash is in trouble. The Minister for Business and Employment is currently in sixth place and will face a tough task to muscle in to the top five.
And two more results: John McGuinness, the outspoken FF TD, has taken the first seat in Carlow-Kilkenny:
And Heather Humphreys, the Minister for Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, has kept her seat in Cavan-Monaghan and is deemed elected on the first count.
Taoiseach Enda Kenny spoke to the media in Mayo moments ago as the first count was read out (in which he topped the poll and was deemed elected).
It was the first appearance form the Fine Gael leader all day. He told the waiting journalists that he was “disappointed” and felt “sorrow” for many Fine Gael candidates.
Democracy is always exciting but it is merciless when it kicks in. That said, at the same time, we’ve had substantial results in a number of constituencies. It more or less puts Fine Gael back to where we were in 2007.
Suspect a lot of Fine Gael members won’t exactly see it in such a positive light.
Sitting Fianna Fáil TD Robert Troy has been re-elected in Longford – Westmeath, keeping the seat he gained for the first time in the 2011 election.
In Wicklow, Simon Harris (FG) and John Brady (SF) have joined Stephen Donnelly (SD) to make up three of the five TDs in the constituency.
Labour leader Joan Burton has just arrived at the Dublin West count centre, which is due to announce a new count in the next few minutes.
Paul Hosford, who is in the count centre, says that tallies are looking strong for her and she is likely to take the third or fourth seat in the 4-seat constituency.
My colleague Dan MacGuill points out that Joan Burton’s day today is uncannily similar to the election of February 1987, when Dick Spring – who was leader of the Labour party and Tánaiste – survived an even bigger scare in Kerry North, hanging on for the final seat by just five votes, after a full recount.
Six votes in the other direction would have effectively ended his political career, but five years later he led the Labour party to its most successful election ever, and became Tánaiste again. Joan Burton will be hoping history can repeat itself.
We’re into the 13th hour of the count now with exactly one quarter of the seats filled. If you’re looking to sum up what’s been a dramatic day so far, here are the main talking points
My colleague Paul Hosford in the Dublin West count centre says there’s “lots of hugging” among Joan Burton’s supporters. “They’re relieved and happy,” he says.
Mary Lou McDonald has just arrived there too. “Today is another milestone for us,” she told the media. “We’re not going away, you know”.
There’s going to be a lot of analysis in the coming days about where it all went wrong for Labour and Fine Gael, and what they could have done differently.
Richard Boyd-Barrett has been talking on RTE radio to Joanna Tuffy (who was one of the first sitting Labour TDs to lose her seat earlier today) about what he thinks the party did wrong:
Even now, I don’t think Labour get it. They were elected to protect the less well-off, something they failed catatrophically to do – and now they’ve paid the price.
My colleague Hugh O’Connell has been talking to Shane Ross about Independents’ Day and the “arrogance of the government”.
The Independent Alliance’s putative leader says he and its three sitting TDs – Finian McGrath, Michael Fitzmaurice, John Halligan – will all be re-elected. Seán Canney has taken a seat in Galway East and he expects Kevin ‘Boxer’ Moran to get a seat.
So we’ve got six, we’re looking at a few others. I’d say we’re the largest small group, which puts us in a pivotal position to put our principles and policies on the table.
On the government’s campaign, he adds:
I think it serves them right. I think the arrogance of the government in this campaign was quite staggering. I thought the way they conducted it was utterly wrong and condescending and I’m not surprised. I think the people reacted against the presumption of wealth in the country that it spread everywhere, which it hadn’t.
Only two constituencies in the country haven’t announced a first count yet: Kerry and Dublin Bay North.
To be fair, they’re both massive constituencies. Kerry has changed from two 3-seaters to one 5-seater, while Dublin Bay North has a massive battle ongoing between its 20 candidates.
But still.
Just in: Labour leader Joan Burton has kept her seat in Dublin West.
The Tánaiste had been under increasing pressure in recent weeks over the party’s lacklustre campaign, but has made it in on the fourth count, along with Ruth Coppinger (SP) and Jack Chambers (FF).
Major relief for Joan Burton. Random fact: she’s the first Labour TD to be elected today.
Seán Ó Fearghaíl (FF) and Fiona O’Loughlin (also FF) have just taken the second and third seats in Kildare South.
Wicklow and Tipperary are both calling it a night. Both count centres have adjourned until tomorrow morning.
Is Alan Kelly in trouble? TCD professor Michael Gallagher thinks he could be.
Michael Lowry is currently the only TD to be elected in Tipperary. Mattie McGrath was 173 votes away from the quota when the count was adjourned until tomorrow – but after that, there is a battle between 4 candidates – including Kelly – for the remaining 3 seats.
Josepha Madigan, who took out her running mate Alan Shatter in Dublin Rathdown, is trying out her new title:
Minister for Children James Reilly is down but he’s not definitively out. That’s the word from the Dublin Fingal count centre, at least, where my colleague Daragh Brophy has been all evening.
“Talked to various teams at Dublin Fingal. James Reilly still in with a slim chance, they say. It’s complicated,” he says.
The Social Democrats have won three seats so far and are hoping for one more, with Gary Gannon in serious contention in Dublin Central.
Could they enter government? Stephen Donnelly isn’t ruling it out:
We want to build a better Ireland based on better democratic values. Anyone who wants to enter that conversation, can enter that conversation. But we won’t accept that status quo.
Clare Daly has been re-elected in Dublin Fingal.
There was a huge welcome for the Green Party’s new TD Catherine Martin as she arrived at the RDS just now:
It’s a sign of how bad things are for Labour that party stalwart Willie Penrose, who has been a TD for the party since 1992, looks unlikely to keep his seat in Longford-Westmeath.
“As a betting person, I wouldn’t be laying much of a wager on my chances,” he said just now.
Clare Daly says she is personally delighted about her re-election, especially as it is her first time running as an independent.
Speaking to RTE radio, she was realistic about what the gains for the small parties and independents mean.
Taoiseach Enda Kenny has become increasingly pragmatic in his media appearances this evening as the numbers repeatedly point to the fact that the only possibility for a majority government is a Fianna Fáil – Fine Gael coalition (FF aren’t quite as pragmatic about it, repeatedly ruling it out).
Speaking to RTE radio a short while ago, Kenny said:
It’s my responsibility and duty as Taoiseach to attempt to provide a government for the people. The people didn’t want an overall majority for anyone, they didn’t want the current government; the over-riding requirement is that the country has a government, it’s my responsibility to provide that.
That sounds like he’s open to almost any government partner, doesn’t it?
How are your nerves right now? Want some added drama?
After 10 counts in Dublin Central, there are 8 (!) votes between Gary Gannon of the Social Democrats and Maureen O’Sullivan (Ind).
There’s disappointment for former Dublin lord mayor Christy Burke (Ind) who was in the mix right up until this 10th count. His votes will now be redistributed – but it could go any way. Recount, anyone?
Scenes from the Mayo count centre where Stephen Manning, a candidate for Integrity Ireland, has been forcibly removed from the building:
Here’s the state of play at 10.45pm with almost exactly one third of the 158 seats filled:
Fianna Fáil is still in the lead. Labour still only has 1 TD.
This is what relief looks like:
The oldest candidate in the election, 85-year-old Ian McGarvey, has just been eliminated in the latest count in Donegal.
85! I’m tired even thinking about that.
Damien English (FG) has been elected in Meath West, filling the last of the three seats there.
And two high-profile eliminations just in: Áine Collins, a sitting Fine Gael TD in Cork North-West, has just been eliminated on the seventh count, while Senator Fidelma Healy Eames of ‘wiffy‘ fame has also been excluded.
Still with us? Sure what else would you be doing at 11.19pm on a Saturday night.
If you’ve any thoughts, comments, reactions, rants or observations, head to the comments section, tweet me @christinebohan or mail me: christine@thejournal.ie. Or just send me some good gifs. I’m open to all forms of human interaction at this stage.
Two quick updates:
We knew it was going to be big but this is huge.
Michael Healy Rae has topped the poll in Kerry with a massive 20,378 votes, smashing through the quota. That’s the single highest first preference vote of any candidate today.
His brother Danny Healy Rae is in second place in the 5-seat constituency with 9,991 votes, and will comfortably get in when Michael’s surplus is distributed.
It’s taken 14 hours and 20 minutes but we have a first count from Dublin Bay North (the last constituency to return a first count, fact fans).
The quota is 12,271 in this 5-seater, and while the first two seats look clear cut, there’ll be a fight for the remaining three. Here are the contenders:
And after teasing us with a first count, the count has now been adjourned until 10 o’clock tomorrow morning.
If there is a more dramatic story than that of Maureen O’Sullivan (Ind) today, we’ve yet to hear it.
The Dublin Central TD was in 7th place in the 3-seater after the first count, and her team had apparently gone home to drown their sorrows, assuming that she’d lost.
Turns out: she hadn’t. She has just been deemed elected at the RDS, after edging out Gary Gannon of the Social Democrats for the final seat.
O’Sullivan joins Paschal Donohoe (FG), who has also just been re-elected, and Mary Lou McDonald (SF) in the constituency.
Nothing like PR-STV for some last-minute drama, is there?
We haven’t had a good old newly-elected-TD- hoisted-up-on-the-shoulders-of-supporters video for a while, have we?
Two more updates:
Just in: Renua leader Lucinda Creighton has been eliminated in Dublin Bay South.
The former Fine Gael TD, who set up Renua last year, was eliminated after the fifth count at the RDS.
Full story is here.
Three more updates:
More on Dublin Bay South:
Lucinda Creighton‘s transfers will be pivotal in deciding who gets over the line in the 4-seater constituency. The first three seats look likely to go to Eoghan Murphy (FG), Eamon Ryan (Green) and Kate O’Connell (FG).
However there are just 104 votes between the remaining three candidates. Going to be a long night for Jim O’Callaghan, Kevin Humphreys and Chris Andrews. Count has been adjourned until tomorrow morning.
Dessie Ellis (SF) has taken the second seat in Dublin North West.
The final seat is a battle between two candidates: Paul McAuliffe (FF) and Noel Rock (FG). McAuliffe is currently ahead by 227 votes, but Rock is likely to benefit when the votes of sitting TD John Lyons (Lab) are redistributed.
Still to close to call either way. The count, like others in the RDS, has been adjourned for the night and will resume at 10am.
Five more seats filled in the last few minutes:
Two sitting Fine Gael TDs, Regina Doherty and Helen McEntee, have been re-elected on the 9th count in Meath East.
It’s winding down for the night at the RDS, with counts to resume at 10am tomorrow morning for Dublin North West, Dublin Bay North, Dublin Bay South and Dublin South Central.
Missed this cry for help from one of our reporters at the National Show Centre in Swords for the Dublin Fingal count a little while ago. Haven’t heard from them in a while. Should probably check on them.
It’s neck and neck between Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael right now with 47% of the seats filled.
Both parties are on 23 seats right now, Sinn Féin is on 10 and Labour is still on just 1 (Joan Burton). The remainder are spread out between independent candidates and the smaller parties.
12 constituencies are continuing to count overnight.
Paul Murphy (PBP-AAA) has taken the second seat in Dublin South West just now.
In Waterford, occasional renegade Fine Gael TD John Deasy has been elected, edging out Minister of State Paudie Coffey for the final seat.
Mayo has just announced the results of the seventh count there with two sitting TDs – Michael Ring (FG) and Dara Calleary (FF) - looking set to be elected in one of the next counts.
My colleague Orla Ryan, who is at the count centre, says that the final seat is a battle between sitting FG TD Michelle Mulherin and newcomer Lisa Chambers (FF). Here are the figures:
The returning officer has called it a night and counting will resume tomorrow.
Labour has taken its second and third seats in close succession just now: Brendan Howlin has taken the first seat in Wexford, while Jan O’Sullivan has taken the last seat in Limerick City.
Michael Noonan took the third seat in Limerick City, just ahead of Jan O’Sullivan, but he didn’t make it easy for himself.
Michael Moynihan and Aindrias Moynihan (both FF) have both been elected on the 9th count in Cork North West.
They’re coming in fast now. Joan Collins (Ind) has been re-elected in Dublin South Central.
In Clare, Michael Harty (Ind) has taken the second seat. He ran on a No Doctor No Village platform as part of a campaign to secure local GPs in rural Ireland.
Carol Nolan of Sinn Féin has been elected in Offaly, taking the third and final seat.
People in Cork have been lighting bonfires to celebrate the election of independent TD Michael Collins in Cork South West:
Which led one of our journalists still here in the newsroom to note the power of the familiar name of the new TD:
My girlfriend’s mam lives in Cork and she told me yesterday that she voted for him literally because his name is Michael Collins
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
The count in Dublin Fingal has been adjourned for the night after Independents 4 Change candidate Barry Martin requested a recheck (full story here - including how Fine Gael’s James Reilly looks like he could lose his seat). The count will resume at 10 o’clock tomorrow.
Dublin South West has just elected its third TD out of a total of five: Seán Crowe of Sinn Féin.
The final two seats look likely to be filled by Colm Brophy and Anne-Marie Dermody (both FG). However Peter Fitzpatrick, who was just eliminated, was an independent candidate, and his transfers may prove a boost to fellow independent Katherine Zappone. All to play for here.
From my colleague Rónán Duffy: Long-time Fine Gael strategist Frank Flannery, who wasn’t involved in this campaign, says that the party took “a bad beating today”, adding that “it is a very severe political setback”.
“Consequently, it is very much a crossroads time for the party in every respect,” he told RTÉ just now.
Asked about Enda Kenny’s future as Fine Gael leader if he isn’t able to form a government, Flannery said that:
I think, if for any reason another taoiseach emerges, then my personal opinion would be that Enda Kenny would take that opportunity to resign. If you look back through history, you will see that Fine Gael leaders have always done that.
Strong words there from the man who masterminded a number of Fine Gael’s previous election campaigns.
Sitting TD Catherine Byrne (FG) has kept her seat in Dublin South Central, taking the third seat just now.
The final seat will be between Catherine Ardagh (FF) and Bríd Smith (PBP-AAA) and will be decided by Byrne’s surplus.
Did Sinn Féin make a mistake running three candidates in Donegal?
The 5-seater count has just now been called off for the night, with only one TD (FF’s Charlie McConalogue) elected so far. Pearse Doherty is going to get in soon, but fellow SF TD Padraig MacLochlainn will be in a battle with independent TD Thomas Pringle for the final seat.
MacLochlainn will do well from the redistribution of the votes of the third SF candidate – but will it be enough?
Front page of tomorrow’s Sunday Independent suggests both Enda Kenny and Joan Burton will face leadership challenges following the results for Fine Gael and Labour.
James Browne (FF) has been elected on the 10th count in Wexford and, we can only assume, told the count centre that he “feels good” about it*.
That means that Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil are neck and neck once again, with 26 seats each.
*Sorry
Ok, we were joking – or at least, what passes for a joke at 2.35am in the morning – about James Browne (FF) feeling good… but he clearly wasn’t.
I’m going to hand over to my colleague Susan Daly for the rest of the counts still going on, but thanks to everyone for the comments, tweets, and cat gifs (or just for reading up until now).
Coverage will be continuing here throughout Sunday (and probably into Monday too) with breaking news and analysis as it happens. Thanks for sticking with us.
Hi all – Susan Daly here with the welcome news that another constituency has delivered a final result.
Roscommon-Galway has now filled all three seats with Fianna Fáil’s Eugene Murphy taking the final one on the eighth count of the night. He joins Denis Naughten and Michael Fitzmaurice who took the first and second seats respectively.
So that’s two independents and a Fianna Fáil TD for Roscommon-Galway; not an uncommon trend in the results we have been seeing today.
Dublin South-West has decided to do us all a solid and elect the remaining two TDs of its five seats with independent senator Katherine Zappone and Fine Gael’s Colm Brophy getting over the line on the 16th – count it, 16th – count.
However, Fine Gael have requested a recount so the returning officer will have a think about that at 10am.
This of course was the constituency where Fianna Fáil’s John Lahart topped the poll in a pretty surprising surge of 9,647 first preferences.
Counting in Donegal – where they are on the eighth count with just one of five seats filled by Fianna Fáil’s Charlie McConalogue very early on – has been suspended for the night.
We too are going to put this liveblog to bed, folks, and resume again early in the morning to bring you more analysis and news from this most astonishing of general election results weekend.
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