Euro blow taints FG success
Second seat in East is lost to Labour Party
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THE only major blot on Fine Gael's electoral copybook came in the European elections after the party prepared to lose a seat in the East to their opposition rivals.
The party topped the poll through sitting MEP Mairead McGuinness, who landed about 26pc of first preferences. But with counting continuing late into the night, it appeared Ms McGuinness's running mate, Senator John Paul Phelan, would fail to hold on to the seat vacated by the retiring Avril Doyle.
While Mr Phelan was last night insisting he wanted to wait until all of the votes were counted and distributed before making a call on the result, Ms Doyle admitted "it's looking difficult" for the party in the constituency.
"It's uphill from here," she told the media at the count centre in Punchestown.
Boost
Conversely, Labour received a huge boost in the East, with Nessa Childers surviving many attacks from all fronts during the campaign to take the second seat, while Fianna Fail's Liam Aylward appeared to be narrowly retaining his Strasbourg berth.
Surprisingly, it was Mr Aylward rather than Ms Childers who was fighting with Mr Phelan for the third seat, with the nationwide backlash against Fianna Fail keeping him on edge over the weekend as his supporters sweated on the result.
The first count had him on 17pc of the vote, behind Ms McGuinness (26pc) and Ms Childers (20pc) but keeping his nose ahead of Mr Phelan (14.5pc). However, the transfers of running mate Thomas Byrne (7pc) were expected to prove crucial in getting the FF veteran over the line.
Meanwhile, Ms Mc-Guinness's lack of a large surplus proved costly for Mr Phelan, who is now expected to prepare the ground for a Dail run in Carlow-Kilkenny at the next general election.
Fine Gael were counting on vote management to allow them replicate their surprise success of 2004, when an effective carve-up of Leinster between Ms McGuinness and Ms Doyle led to both of them being put on the plane by the voters.
Back then, however, with Ms McGuinness topping the poll, Ms Doyle was ahead of both Mr Aylward and Labour's Peter Cassells after the first count -- this time Mr Phelan lagged well behind his rivals on first preferences.
Further down the list, Sinn Fein's Kathleen Funchion (6pc) polled well without threatening to get into contention, with party colleague Tomas Sharkey behind her (5pc); while Libertas candidate Raymond O'Malley failed to make an impact, mustering just 4.3pc of the vote.
- Conor Kane
