SWEDEN MATCHED IRELAND’S record for the most Eurovision wins last night, taking its 7th victory as the competition’s organisers announced that Ireland had placed 12th in this week’s first semi-final.

Winning contestant Loreen received 538 points last night with her song Tattoo and had already won the Eurovision previously in 2012,  becoming the second person after Ireland’s Johnny Logan to win two Eurovision titles.

Ireland’s Wild Youth were the sixth performance on Tuesday night’s semi-final and scored two places away from qualifying for last night’s final.

The band’s performance of ‘We Are One’ received ten points, Eurovision revealed, calculating their final score by dividing their points by the total points given in the semi-final.

This marks a slight improvement from Brooke Scullion’s performance of ‘That’s Rich’ in Turin last year, which was voted 15th out of the 18 participating countries in its semi-final.

This week’s semi-finals were a solely public vote, in a change to previous years.

With the exception of one year, Ireland have not progressed from the weekday shows since 2013.

However, the head of the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) has said that it is always possible for countries to turn their Eurovision fortunes around, citing the UK’s success in the 2022 contest.

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The UK’s Sam Ryder placed second last year, after Ukraine, with his song ‘Space Man’, which led to the competition being hosted in Liverpool this year due to security concerns about the contest being held in Ukraine.

Noel Curran, the Director General of the EBU – speaking to The Journal earlier this week in Liverpool – said he wasn’t concerned at the prospect of countries “losing heart” during unsuccessful periods at the contest where they may not qualify for the final. 

“The UK got zero points or very little points for so many years and then they came back … so things can turn around for everybody and there’s always that sense that things can turn around,” he said.

“We don’t see any signs that countries are saying, ‘we’re not qualifying, we’re going to withdraw’. The event is too big for that I think.”