Local and European election results: Battle for final council seats as focus switches to European counts

Main Points

European Election Count

• Fianna Fáil’s Barry Andrews looks poised to win the first seat in the Dublin constituency, where he finished just ahead of Fine Gael’s Regina Doherty, with battle expected between Sinn Féin’s Lynn Boylan, The Green Party’s Ciarán Cuffe, Aodhán Ó Ríordáin of Labour, Independent Ireland’s Niall Boylan, Clare Daly of Independents4Change and People Before Profit’s Bríd Smith for the other two seats.
• Exit polling from eight countries shows far-right parties are on course to make gains in several European countries, while support for the centre-right European People’s Party (EPP) is holding up well
• French president Emmanuel Macron has dissolved the national assembly after far-right gains
• In the Midlands-North-West constituency sitting MEPs Luke Ming Flanagan (Ind) and Maria Walsh (FG) have performed well, according to tallies, but a first count is not expected until late today
• In the South constituency, incumbents Sean Kelly (FG) and Billy Kelleher (FF) are in contention for re-election

Local Election Count

• Counting in the local elections will continue on Monday with over two-thirds of seats declared
• A better-than-expected performance for the Government parties in the local elections has led to pressure on Taoiseach Simon Harris to call an early general election
• Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald has said “it hasn’t been our day [and] frustration – anger indeed – with Government policy on this occasion has translated into votes for Independents and others”. Read the full report here
• Smaller parties are all mostly expected to retain their seats across county and city councils, with some gains for the Social Democrats and Aontú in particular

Limerick Mayoral Election

• Counting will begin in Limerick today in the race to become Ireland’s first directly elected mayor, with Independent candidate John Moran believed to be in the lead.

Best Reads

And we’re off again in Fingal where there are three recounts under way – for the Castleknock, Howth/Malahide and  Blanchardstown areas. According to our man on the ground Martin Wall, one to watch will be the performance of the National Party which is in the hunt for a seat in Blanchardstown. A total of 33 of the 40 seats on Fingal Council have now been filled.

And we have news from Barry Roche in Cork.

Seasoned election watchers at Nemo estimate the quota in Ireland South on a turnout of around 713,000 will be between 110,000 and 115,000 depending on the number of spoiled ballots.

They estimate Sean Kelly will be approximately 10,000 over the quota to be elected on the first count with Billy Kelleher in second place but shy of the quota on the first count

Again today as yesterday, count staff are reporting large numbers of voters going literally to the centre of the ballot paper and voting No 1 Kelly and No 2 Kelleher or vice versa.

They’re checking them once, they’re checking them twice….

Has Orban arrived at his Waterloo?

Widening the lens for a moment, it has been a bad weekend for Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban. His Fidesz party is on track for its worst result in a national or EU vote in nearly two decades.

According to Reuters, the projections are that Fidesz and its small Christian Democrat allies will secure 11 seats in the European Parliament with 44.2 per cent of votes, down from a combined 13 seats in the last parliament.

The tally showed Peter Magyar’s right-of-centre Tisza coming second with seven seats and 30 per cent of votes, more than all other opposition parties combined and a better outcome than any of the polls leading up to the election forecast.

Speaking to supporters, Mr Orban said the results showed Hungarian democracy was alive and well, declaring victory at Sunday’s elections.

“In a war situation and in a difficult battle, we have scored important victories,” he told supporters, adding the results affirmed his government’s policy course.

A political newcomer, Mr Magyar swooped into Hungarian politics earlier this year, promising to root out corruption and revive democratic checks and balances in Hungary.

His party has capitalised on widespread frustration among voters with Hungary’s opposition parties, who have failed to mount a credible challenge to Orban during his 14-year rule, with the next national election due in 2026.

“This result is the Waterloo of Orban’s factory of power. The beginning of the end,” Mr Magyar told supporters. “What happened is a political landslide.”

Final seats still in play in DLR

A full recount of the Blackrock electoral area votes will start this morning after Independent Cormac Lucey came in just two votes behind Fine Gael newcomer Dan Carson for the sixth and last seat, reports Marie O’Halloran.

Mr Lucey, an accountant and commentator, called for the recount when Labour’s Martha Fanning, Fine Gael’s Maurice Dockrell and Mr Carson were elected on the 10th count without reaching the quota.

Counting also continues today in seven-seater Killiney-Shankill to fill the final two seats.

The surplus of Fine Gael’s Jacqueline Burke will be distributed, but indications are that it will leave just four votes between Sinn Féin’s Roland Kennedy and People Before Profit’s Dave O’Keeffe, with the possibility of a recount in this electoral area also.

NEWS SNAP: We have John Fallon in Galway with an update on the state of play. There are still five of the six seats to be filled in Galway City West, with four of five seats to be filled in Connemara South.

Counting will resume in the next hour or so.

A recount in Athenry-Oranmore has seen no change so these are confirmed elected: Albert Dolan (FF), Tomas Grealish (Ind), David Collins (FG), James Charity (Ind), Peter Feeney (FG), Louis O’Hara (SF) and Cillian Keane (FF).

“Elections are not on our mind’ says FG’s Naughton

Another Minister dampening down election expectations as Government Chief Whip Hildegarde Naughton of Fine Gael says the public’s desire is for “stability”.

“That’s the strong message that we’re getting. So we really do have a lot of work to do in relation to this and elections are not on our mind,” she told RTÉ Radio 1.

The TD for Galway West added: “We have a programme for government that we need to deliver, a huge amount has been delivered to date.

“But a lot of this legislation does take time to get over the line, and we have such an amount of Bills to get through right up to mid-July and also when we are back in the Dáil in September. So we really need to finish off that work.”

A budget before an election, suggests McGrath

Minister for Finance Michael McGrath is not getting “carried away” and is planning for an autumn budget as he played down speculation of an early general election.

Speaking on Morning Ireland he warned it “would take perhaps many weeks, and who knows maybe even months, after a general election before we have a new government, and I think we should not take the risk of going into 2025 without having a budget legislated for and fully implemented because economic stability comes from political stability.

“And that’s why I believe we should have a budget. We should legislate for the budget and we should implement it and then go to the people based on our record.

“We’re not getting carried away for a moment,” he said. “We are not saying that this is a predictor of a general election. We want to improve on the number of seats we have in the next general election, and there’s a lot of work left to do – but this does demonstrate that our vote is resilient.”

Mr McGrath said Fianna Fáil is likely to end up with three seats in Europe, but that “there is a lot of counting still to do”, and he said his party and Fine Gael would be the dominant parties in local government. “I think this is a significant achievement.”

We also heard from Jessica Thompson in Longford where counting continued until just after 5am. A recount will commence in Granard LEA at 2pm, the Longford LEA count will continue at 12pm while the Ballymahon LEA recount will kick off at 9am.

The first news we have this morning is that after 23 hours of counting, they have just finished up in Co Louth. Shauna Bowers is there. James Byrne (FF), Paddy McQuillan (Ind) and Ejiro O’Hare Stratton (FG) were all elected on the 16th count in the Drogheda Urban LEA (local electoral area) so that is that for Louth.

European election results in Ireland are only as far as one count in one constituency, but across the Continent, results are breaking in interesting ways, Jack Power reports from Brussels.

In France, most notably, Marine Le Pen’s far right, anti-immigrant National Rally topped the polls with twice the vote of Emmanuel Macron’s centrist bloc – which the president took as his cue to call a snap general election.

The nationalist right did well in Italy and elsewhere too, but not as well as had been expected in many places, including Germany where the centre-left appears to have caught up with AfD in second place.

Miriam Lord was at the RDS for the counts on Sunday, observing the mood among Sinn Féin’s luminaries – and their rivals – as results rolled in.

“It has not been our day but we will have our day … we clearly have lessons to learn,” Mary Lou McDonald said. “We’ve literally been on thousands, probably tens of thousands of doorsteps.”

Sure, what more can they do after that?

“At this point in time I want to listen to people.”

Good results for Government parties in the locals gave their backers a more jubilant mood.

“Her own back garden, literally,” gasped one Fine Gael supporter when he saw the figures for Cabra-Glasnevin. “Two seats! Cabrafadabra!”

Good morning and welcome to day three of election results brought to you live through the day. I’m Conor Pope and I will be at the helm for the morning, with Harry McGee taking over for the evening as the European picture (hopefully) becomes clear.

So, where are we now?

It has been a good weekend for the Government parties in the local elections and that somewhat unexpected turn of events has inevitably lead to calls for an early general election with Sinn Féin’s worse-than-expected performance giving Fine Gael folk a sense of opportunity. Taoiseach Simon Harris is resisting those calls, Political Editor Pat Leahy reports.

“My position in relation to the next general election remains the same,” Mr Harris told The Irish Times Inside Politics podcast. “I think the Government going full term is important, and I look forward to continuing that.”

As dawn broke this morning, almost 830 of the 949 council seats across the country were filled so there is still a ways to go there and you’d have to feel sorry for the poor count centre staff, many of whom were working late into the night and will be back in this morning for another shift at the trestle tables and cubbyholes.

Meanwhile counting in the third vote, the race for Limerick’s directly elected mayor, will also get under way.

We’ll also get first counts in Ireland South and Midlands North West, while the chasing pack in Dublin behind poll-topper Barry Andrews (FF) and Regina Doherty (FG) will begin to see which way transfers break for the remaining seats, with Sinn Féin’s Lynn Boylan, Green Ciarán Cuffe, Labour’s Aodhán Ó Riordáin, Niall Boylan and Clare Daly in the hunt.