Fine Gael’s Sean Kelly and Fianna Fail’s Billy Kelleher appeared to be polling strongly as count workers sorted through ballot papers in the South constituency of Ireland’s European election.
The two incumbent MEPs also appear to be transferring well to one another over their running mates, in a sign of the strength of Ireland’s Fianna Fail-Fine Gael-Green party coalition.
Independent Clare TD Michael McNamara, who was vocal in his opposition to the two defeated March referenda; Sinn Fein TD Kathleen Funchion; and Mick Wallace, an ex-TD and Co Wexford property developer, are polling well behind them.
As the ballot papers are quite long, an initial “sub-sort” is taking place at Nemo Rangers count centre in Co Cork on Sunday.
Papers with a No 1 vote on the top half of the ballot are being put in one pile and ballots with a first preference on the bottom half in another.
Returning officer Martin Harvey said based on having around 715,000 ballot papers and 250 staff, it will be “very late into this evening before we have a first count”, estimating it could be as late as midnight.
Ireland’s proportional representation system means counting could go on for days before the five seats in the 10-county constituency are filled.
Count staff were seen with reams of ballots slung over their shoulder as they busily sorted ballots into cubby-holes.
There were very few ballots with numbered preferences all the way down, with many voters having numbered their preferences up to six at the most.
One ballot paper gave Mr Kelleher a “20” with no other preferences, while another had a Star of David drawn in the middle.
There were five MEPs elected to the Ireland South constituency in 2019: Mr Kelly and Deirdre Clune for Fine Gael, Mr Kelleher for Fianna Fail, the Green Party senator Grace O’Sullivan and Mick Wallace from Independents4Change.
The constituency – which spans 10 counties, from The Burren in Co Clare, down to the Ring of Kerry and up to Bray in Co Wicklow – represents around 1.2 million people.
In the last European Parliament election, Mr Kelly, a former GAA president, topped the poll with just a few votes short of the quota of 119,866.
The native from Killarney, Co Kerry, is one of Ireland’s second longest-serving MEPs, having first been elected in 2009.
Mr Kelleher, a former TD and junior minister, and Mr Wallace won 11.69% and 11.37% of the first preference vote respectively last time.
A battle then erupted between Sinn Fein’s incumbent MEP Liadh Ni Riada, an Irish-speaking TV producer who ran as a presidential candidate in 2018, and Grace O’Sullivan, a former Greenpeace activist and surfer from Co Waterford.
More than 300 votes separated the two candidates for the fourth seat, and a recount was ordered before Ms Ni Riada conceded eight days later.
The distribution of her votes saw Ms O’Sullivan win the fourth seat and Ms Clune, a former Cork South-Central TD, take the fifth seat without reaching the quota.
Other notable candidates in this constituency for 2024 are Fianna Fail’s Cynthia Ni Mhurchu, co-host of the 1994 Eurovision Song Contest; Aontu’s Patrick Murphy, who was among a group of fishermen who opposed a flotilla of Russian warships located off the south-west coast of Ireland; and anti-immigration activist Derek Blighe.
Of the 23 candidates in Ireland South, seven are independents and three are from new parties.
Among the issues which will be watched closely is the performance of candidates who called for much stricter rules on immigration during their campaigns.
Some parties formed in Ireland in recent months have called for clampdowns on immigration and criticised climate change policies, replicating a trend taking place in other European Union nations.
