Head over to our T
Morning Call – Higgins takes 3rd Dublin Seat
Read more about: Features 
At 5.30 my phone buzzes, ‘Joe elected, we are done here’. Now that is hardcore. Eoin Ryan, like the terminator, menaces that he will be back probably to Dublin South East and signalling the exit of Chris Andrews. Mairead McGuinness is the only other MEP to be elected thus far outside of Dublin and counting resumes in Punchestown, Cork and Castlebar this morning. We might not have results until much later today.
Local seat count with 34 left to fill:
FG 325, FF 209, Lab 129, Other 131, SF 52, GP 3
The all important angle now becomes the tight Dail arithmetic. 84-81 with Healy-Rae and Lowry more powerful than ever and more headaches for Pat Carey on the backbenches.
Some of the press is good, some of it is a bit iffy. Late last night, in a lonely RDS, Harry McGee posted that we are now in the endgame. The utter implosion of Fianna Fail in Dublin and especially in Dublin central cannot be overlooked – the party is losing it seats on councils representing a large portion of the country and that is not good news for a general election.
In the Irish Times they call it a historic voting shift, we will have to wait for a trend (from election to election) to emerge before making that kind of judgement but Fine Gael beating FF into second place is pretty powerful.Wipeout is the simple response from the Examiner and a very strong editorial hits out at Fianna Fail’s delusion and blather as they now begin to feel the kind of pain that voters felt as they manage the downturn.
We might be in a new political era, but stories which are still raising questions about Fine Gael persist.
Count update:
No one is calling the seat in the South as yet but most agree that the independent Kathy Sinnot looks poised to do well on transfers. Alan Kelly and Toireasa Ferris both have possible paths to victory and the elimination of Ned O Keeffe and the way his transfers go will be vital to all this as will the amount of votes that Sean Kelly needs from Colm Burke assuming Burke cannot catch the next lowest candidate. This one will be awesome for the next day or so.
In the East it is almost done and dusted as McGuinness is over the line, Childers set to follow and Thomas Byrne has enough to ensure that Aylward gets in ahead of John Paul Phelan.
Over in North and West we are rummaging through wheelie bins this morning looking for Declan Ganley’s 10,000 votes – although his total is within 2,000 of Marian Harkin‘s tally from Saturday so perhaps all he will find is old fish heads. Still any excuse for the wellies I suppose. Once that messing is done with, the count resumes with Pat ‘the cope’, Higgins and Harkin in pole.
The election of ‘the cope’ will add to headaches for Fianna Fail when they have to run a by-election to replace a solid organisation. The candidate who stopped Sinn Fein at a Euro level may leave the field open for a decent by election run and potential damage to Coughlan in her back yard and a worsening government majority.
On the face of it this is an amazing performace by Higgins. He was competing for the third seat against two sitting MEPs – one of whom, Mary Lou McDonald, had a very high profile. Not only that, Mary Lou and he were also competing for a left wing vote and in a constituency where one left wing (even if with a small l) De Rossa, was always a dead cert. I mean, I can see how the transfers died on Ryan and left him stranded, but anyway, I think it was a great result for Higgins nonetheless.
Agree with you.
I think O’Higgins is honest. He is certainly a straight-talker and I miss his lively contribution to Parliamentary Debates.
It is unlikely that he can make any useful contribution, for Ireland, in the wider context of Europe – as Socialists have been all but wiped out there, a reaction to wasteful social spending that has hit the pockets of taxpayers across Europe.
Eoin Ryan is more in tune with Europe and has made a valuable contribution during his 25 years as an MEP.
But he was caught in the backlash of revulsion against Bertie Ahern’s scrounging, and the mess he made of the economy – with his stupid support of the trade unions and reckless bank lending against undeveloped land and property.
However, to pay an MEP €375,000 per annum (plus, presumably a pension contribution and expenses) seems outrageous, when so many Irish people are being taxed out of existence.
On the plus side, Adams & his confreres will be denied access to that €375K of hard-pressed taxpayers’ money, and one can only feel a little – just a little – sorry for Lulu-Mae, after all those earnest, frowning weeks of patient foot-slogging, parroting the weasel words – penned for her by the IRA back-office PR eminences grises.
On the further plus side, she will now have time to return to her knitting and give some quality time to her children.