‘Fine Gael and Labour share the four seats’

There were no Constituency Commission boundary changes here since 2007 and it remained a four-seat constituency.

This was another good performance by Fine Gael as its vote was up 17 points and with 1.8 quotas the party comfortably took two seats. Outgoing deputy Lucinda Creighton topped the poll with 6,619 first preferences and was close to the quota on the first count. She went on to take the second seat on the sixth count. She was followed home by Eoghan Murphy who was in second place with 5,783 on the first count and he went on to take the third seat.

The Labour vote was up nine points and the party managed to convert just 1.3 quotas into two seats at the expense of Fianna Fáil. Ruairi Quinn took the first seat with 5,407 first preferences. Kevin Humphreys had a much tougher battle as he was outside the frame on the first count with half a quota and trailed Chris Andrews by 472 votes. But he won the transfer battle, in particular from independent Sommerville and went on to extend his lead over the Fianna Fáil candidate, taking the final seat by over 1,200 votes.

This constituency was another disappointment for Fianna Fáil with its vote down 17.5 points to just 11%, one of the party’s lowest in this election. Outgoing deputy Chris Andrews was in the frame in fourth place on the first count, ahead of Humphreys but was beaten by the Labour man on every count except one and Andrews duly lost his seat on the tenth and final count.

This was another poor performance by the Greens with John Gormley’s vote down 7 points to just 7%. His vote halved to leave him in seventh place on the first count and he was never in contention.

Eight independents contested this area with Paul Sommerville and Dylan Haskins the only ones to get enough votes to reclaim their expenses. The business candidate Sommerville had a good media profile going into this election but it was not enough to put him in contention for a seat. One of the independents Peadar Ó Ceallaigh got just 18 first preferences, the lowest by any of the 566 candidates that contested this election and the second lowest on record, behind Maria McCool who got 13 first preferences in Dublin North West in 1997.

The turnout was up seven points to 60.54% in this constituency but it still had the lowest turnout in this election as it had in 2007.