The Limerick Blogger: latest Limerick news and Limerick events

This is the last of the election videos I have. Back to normality tomorrow,

The Pee Dees lose another seat as Kieran O’Donnell has been deemed elected despite not reaching the quota.

This will be the first time in over half a century where an O’Malley has not represented Limerick in politics. In fact, it has been a double blow for the O’Malley dynasty as Fiona has also been booted out of her seat in Dun Laoghaire.

Right Wing government, No Thanks!

The Elimination of Noreen Ryan has lead to Jan O’Sullivan being elected. The surplus will now be divided between Fine Gael’s Kieran O’Donnell and Tim O’Malley of the Progressive Democrats.

Latest from the count via limerickleader.ie

O’Sullivan LAB (878) 8,114
O’Donnell FG (350) 6,498
O’Malley PD (144) 4,670
Ryan FF (574) 4,110 – ELIMINATED

The number in brackets represents the votes distributed following the elimination of Maurice Quinlivan.

With transfers from Trish Forde-Brennan counted, the sixth count failed to elect any candidate.

Here are the results from LimerickLeader.ie

O’Sullivan, J. LAB (+618) 7,238
O’Donnell, K. FG (+332) 6,148
O’Malley, T. PD (+139) 4,526
Ryan, N. FF (+117) 3,536
Quinlivan, M. SF (+153) 2,839 – ELIMINATED

Maurice Quinlivan’s votes will now be distributed between the remaining candidates. Jan O’Sullivan needs 92 votes to meet the quota.

From LimerickLeader.ie

Trish Forde Brennan has been eliminated in the fifth count.

The results from count five

Forde-Brennan GREEN (+187) 1,619
Noonan FG ELECTED SECOND COUNT
O’Dea FF ELECTED FIRST COUNT
O’Donnell FG (+172) 5,816
O’Malley PD (+79) 4,387
O’Sullivan LAB (+204) 6,556
Power FF ELECTED SECOND COUNT
Quinlivan SF (+173) 2,686
Ryan FF (+144) 3,419

The number in brackets denotes the number of votes transferred from the elimination of the triple digit candidates. Devane, McCarthy, Moore, O’Donoghue and Riordan.

No candidate was elected in Count five

With the “No Refund” candidates eliminated, and with the batteries in the mobile, the Camera and the laptop all screaming to be charged. It was time for me to come home.

Don’t worry, I have plenty of count video to upload. And will be putting it on the site as soon as it is processed.

Just a quick note to those who offered passes to the count. Maurice Quinlivan, Brian Stokes and Trish Forde-Brennan. I could only take one so I took the one Trish offered me as she was the first to do so.

Anyway, with a 500 ml bottle of water costing a whopping €2.50 and a small paper cup of coffee costing €2, I can see now why politicians want a quick e-voting system rather than the long drawn out count.

The West Limerick constituency counting was quick and predictable. While the East Limerick count was still underway when I left the racecourse.

Best news of the night had to be Mick McDowell being given the heave hoe. It happened not long before 2100 hrs and there were few in the centre who were sad to see him go.

Willie O Dea was there, but not for long. He, along with a massive posse. They swept into the centre, waving a Vote Willie O Dea poster, heard their declaration and then left as quickly as they entered. Sort of like a Willie Flashmob. Rumour has it that most of them could be found in Punches Pub not long after the result.

A similar series of events surrounded Michael Noonan’s election, although they threw him in the air a couple of times before leaving. He and Peter Power were deemed elected during the same count. What remained was for michael Noonan’s and Power’s surplus votes to be distributed.

As this did not bring any of the others to the quote, the triple digit candidates were then eliminated.

It looks as though Jan O’Sullivan and Kieran O’Donnell will be elected, and for the first time in over half a century, there will be no O’Malley representing Limerick.

This is the first time I have ever been at an election count, and was most enlightened by it.

I was surprised not only of the number of people who had heard of the site, but who actually read it.

Maurice Quinlivan and Trish Brennan should be happy with their votes, they were quite impressive. Quinlivan more than doubled the number of first preferences his party received in the last election they ran in in Limerick East, that being the 1998 By-election. Maurice got more than 2080 first preferences.

Trish has told me that she is now aiming for local government after her respectable first preferences today.

Maurice could comfortably win a seat on City Council with the amount of support he received today also.

One common issue which was being mentioned by candidates was the disenfranchisement of legitimate voters particularly in working class estates, such as Moyross and St. Mary’s Park.