Fianna Fáil spokesperson for agriculture, food and the marine Charlie McConalogue has retained his Dáil seat in the Donegal constituency – but at the expense of his party colleague Pat ‘the Cope’ Gallagher.
The Donegal TD was re-elected on the ninth count in the northwestern constituency to take a seat in the five-seater alongside: Sinn Féin’s Pearse Doherty and Pádraig MacLochlainn; outgoing Minister for Education Joe McHugh of Fine Gael; and independent TD Thomas Pringle.
McConalogue needed “the Cope’s” transfers to get over the line in the end, in what was a close race between the two before the latter’s elimination.
Gallagher is the outgoing Leas-Cheann Comhairle and previously served as an MEP for the Midlands-North West constituency.
Elsewhere, outgoing Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine Michael Creed also retained his constituency seat in Cork North-West.
Meanwhile, in Tipperary, independent candidate Mattie McGrath and Fianna Fáil’s Jackie Cahill have both now been deemed elected in the five-seat constituency.
The Tipperary count is now complete. Apart from McGrath and Cahill, the other successful candidates are independent Michael Lowry; Sinn Féin’s Martin Browne; and Labour’s Alan Kelly.
In Roscommon-Galway, independent TD Michael Fitzmaurice was elected with a surplus of 1,600 votes in the Roscommon-Galway constituency, with former minister for communications Denis Naughten taking the second of three seats in the constituency.