INDEPENDENT MEP NESSA Childers and Fine Gael junior minister Brian Hayes have been confirmed elected to the European Parliament, joining Sinn Féin’s Lynn Boylan as Dublin’s representatives in Brussels.
The confirmation came after the Green Party leader Eamon Ryan called for a recheck of some ballot papers when he found himself in fourth place, just 1,149 votes behind Hayes, after the seventh count which was announced at 4am this morning.
The Dublin city returning officer James Barry confirmed the result at the count centre just after 7pm this evening following the recheck of ballot papers by counters this afternoon.
Around 352,000 votes were checked and counters carried out random checks on the transfers from the already eliminated Fianna Fáil candidate Mary Fitzpatrick and the Socialist MEP Paul Murphy.
“Incredibly minor discrepancies” were uncovered which meant the overall outcome – the election of Hayes and Childers – was not affected.
Childers’ election sees her return to the European Parliament as an independent having been elected as a Labour MEP for Ireland East in 2009. She quit the party in recent years over its policies in government and was speaking on the day that Eamon Gilmore announced his intention to resign as Labour leader.
Childers described the departure of Gilmore as leader as a “mistake” and a “scapegoating”, accusing all party members of “colluding” on Labour’s policies in government.
Of her plans in Brussels, she said: “I intend to continue with what I was already doing. I work in the public health area.”
She added: “I will also be fighting for the Irish people the way I have been for five years, without cease, to stop the situation that we’re in and I will continue that, possibily with other MEPs that have been elected.”
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Hayes said that he was not surprised to take the third seat given the circumstances where “the party vote was down so heavily in Dublin”.
He said: “I am really, really delighted. It’s just as well we didn’t run two candidates because we wouldn’t have held the seat. It means so much to hold on to the seat for Fine Gael in Dublin.”
Despite its current troubles, Hayes said the coalition is “the best thing the country has going for it now” and that “most people, in their hearts, realise that”.
Meanwhile the defeated Ryan said he was disappointed with the outcome but added that the Greens had run “a really good campaign”, saying: “Both in the local and the European elections we had a good result.”
On his future intentions, Ryan said he would consider running in the next general election and didn’t rule out running in the Dublin South-West by-election caused by Hayes’s election to the European Parliament.
However, he added: “I’ve to go home and talk to my wife!”
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