Maurice Ahern – Is in he, is he out, is he in, is he out…

The Fianna Fáil second tier are dripping into the count centre as we speak. Sean Haughey was first – arriving about an hour ago. Pat Carey popped in a half-hour later. Mary Hanafin is the latest, she sauntered in quietly under the radar and hugged Maurice Ahern while most cameras wern’t switched on – mine included. Word is that Eoin Ryan won’t make landfall until much later – I’ve heard nothing about Brian Lenihan but given that he was in RTÉ earlier today, which is less than ten minutes walk from here, one may take it as indicative of the FF mindset if he doesn’t make an appearance sometime soon.

There are not many opposition party members around, which is unsurprising given that many of their candidates are already either in or out in this area. They’re probably still drunk recovering. The Vote Gay Mitchell Team is less prominent than yesterday so far – they were all wearing lovely matching Vote Gay Mitchell coats, I’m sure they’ll show up later. Leo Varadkar was in for a biton his own but seems to have disappeared for the time being.

There is bugger-all going on here at the moment to be perfectly honest. We’re waiting for it to heat up around 6pm.

Maurice’s LEA looks set to go to a recount, I don’t think he expected it to go this far, the Sinn Féiner is giving him trouble. Maurice has a ticket to the Dubs’ game and his jersey on under his suit – but he’s sticking around.