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LAST UPDATE | 11 Feb 2020
IT WAS A day of highs and lows as the ballot boxes were opened and votes counted across Ireland on Sunday and Monday.
The count finished at almost exactly midnight with the clock striking time on the current phase of 35 politicians’ careers.
For some TDs, the past three days have been confirmation of huge support in their local constituency. For others, it was a surprising day where they made up for lacklustre local election performance by scooping up many, many more votes.
But for a small group of candidates, it was a bad day – they would no longer be TDs.
The mostly high-profile group have been familiar faces from their appearances in the Dáil over the past four years. But now they have to get used to life out of the Dáil chamber.
Here’s who has lost out…
Kate O’Connell – Fine Gael
It was a bad day for O’Connell. She, her running mate Eoghan Murphy, and Fianna Fáil’s Jim O’Callaghan had all hoped to get the two last seats in Dublin Bay South.
However, after transfers were distributed, the two seats went to Murphy and O’Callaghan though neither had met the quota.
Shane Ross – Independent
Ross was eliminated in the Dublin Rathdown constituency on the fifth count.
However, he had earlier conceded that his imminent departure from the role was ‘not altogether a surprise’.
Regina Doherty – Fine Gael
The Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection was defeated in Meath East.
She received 5,122 first preferences and was eliminated on the sixth count. Doherty was first elected to the Dáil in 2011. Her running mate Helen McEntee, who is Minister for European Affairs, took a seat in that constituency for Fine Gael.
Katherine Zappone – Independent
The Minister for Children was first elected in 2016, following on from becoming a Senator in 2011.
Zappone was a prominent voice during the marriage equality referendum in 2015 and won a marathon count in Dublin South-West the following year, entering the Dáil for the first time.
She agreed to support Enda Kenny’s minority government and became a minister.
Ruth Coppinger – Solidarity-People Before Profit
In Dublin West, the Solidarity – People Before Profit TD was defeated on the sixth count.
Coppinger was first elected in 2014 during a by-election.
She told Newstalk she was “extremely disappointed” to lose her seat as she had been a strong socialist voice in the Dáil.
Noel Rock – Fine Gael
Noel Rock was elected for the first time in 2016 and was the first Fine Gael TD in Dublin North West for 24 years.
Rock’s bid for re-election suffered a blow in 2017 when boundary changes moved parts of areas that voted heavily for him into Dublin Central.
Tom Neville – Fine Gael
Limerick County’s Neville has been a TD since the 2016 general election.
He was elected as a councillor in 2004 before emigrating to Australia a few years later.
He returned before the 2014 local elections and was re-elected to the council. He is the secretary of the Fine Gael parliamentary party.
Pat ‘the Cope’ Gallagher- Fianna Fáil
Symbolically a bad loss for Fianna Fáil in Donegal, with the leas ceann comhairle in the previous Dáil losing his seat.
A true party stalwart who was first elected to the Dáil in 1981 and who also served as an MEP, Gallagher was beaten for the fifth seat by his party colleague Charlie McConalogue.
Catherine Byrne – Fine Gael
Junior Health Minister with Responsibility for Drugs Strategy Catherine Byrne has lost her seat in Dublin South Central.
Byrne had pulled in the second-highest first preference vote in the constituency but transfers from Sinn Féin went heavily to other left-leaning candidates like Bríd Smith (Sol -PBP), Patrick Costello (Green) and Joan Collins (I4C) who were all elected.
Declan Breathnach – Fianna Fáil
Louth’s Declan Breathnach is another casualty for Fianna Fail, with the party winning no seats in the five-seater.
Kevin O’Keeffe – Fianna Fáil
In Cork East, Fianna Fáil’s Kevin O’Keeffe lost his seat in what local newspaper the Echo described as a “huge shock”. His running mate James O’Connor took a seat.
O’Keeffe is the son of politician Ned O’Keeffe and was first elected as a TD in 2016.
Andrew Doyle – Wicklow
Fine Gael’s Andrew Doyle lost out in Wicklow after a long count that saw the Green Party’s Steven Matthews and Fianna Fáil’s Stephen Donnelly sneak past him.
Malcolm Byrne – Fianna Fáil
Malcolm Byrne has become one of the shortest-serving TDs in history after losing his seat just over two months after winning the Wexford by-election.
With the Christmas break not long over, Byrne had a total of only eight sitting days in the Dáil.
Byrne won a national profile with a strong performance in last year’s European elections that had marked him out as one if the rising stars in Fianna Fáil.
Joan Burton – Labour
Labour stalwart Joan Burton is perhaps the most high profile of the pack to lose her seat – and it’s indicative of the losses Labour has suffered so far in this general election.
Burton is a former Tánaiste, Minister for Social Protection and Labour Party leader, and was first elected to the Dáil in 1992. The Dublin native lost her seat on the fifth count.
Pat Breen – Fine Gael
Another senior member of government to lose their seat, Junior Minister Pat Breen didn’t get across the line in Clare.
Breen has been a TD for Clare since 2002 but the constituency has elected just one Fine Gael deputy in the form of sitting TD Joe Carey.
Bobby Aylward – Fianna Fáil
Fianna Fáil’s Bobby Aylward was first elected in Carlow-Kilkenny in 2007, he lost his seat in 2011 and won it again in a 2015 by-election and then in the 2016 election.
Aylward lost out on the tenth count in Carlow-Kilkenny to Green Party candidate Malcolm Noonan.
Aylward’s brother Liam is a former junior minister and MEP.
Marcella Corcoran Kennedy – Fine Gael
In the last election in 2016 Laois and Offaly were separate constituencies of three seats each. Those two have now been combined into a single five-seater and Corcoran Kennedy was the one squeezed out.
She had been a junior minister in the Department of Health prior to Leo Varadkar’s election as taoiseach but lost her brief thereafter.
Mary Mitchell O’Connor – Fine Gael
The Dun Laoghaire count saw Mitchell O’Connor eliminated on the eighth count. It had been thought that she might be safe after early tallies indicated her numbers looked good.
But it was not to be, and the Minister for Higher Education was eliminated. Her running mate, the relative unknown Jennifer Carroll MacNeill, won a seat in the four-seat constituency.
Mitchell was first elected in 2011 and has been Minister for Higher Education since 2017.
Michael D’Arcy – Fine Gael
Junior Minister with responsibility for Financial Services and Insurance Michael D’Arcy has lost his seat in Wexford.
His Fine Gael colleague Paul Kehoe won the last seat in the five-seater.
Lisa Chambers – Fianna Fáil
Chambers lost her Mayo seat on the seventh count, after receiving 8,911 first preference votes.
The young TD didn’t receive enough transfers to get one of the four seats in her constituency. She was a familiar voice and face on the airwaves due to being Fianna Fáil’s Brexit spokesperson, and had served as a TD since 2016.
Chambers was issued a warning last December for her involvement in ‘Votegate’.
Eamon Scanlon – Fianna Fáil
Scanlon was first elected as a TD in 2007. He lost his seat in the 2011 general election and was re-elected in 2016.
He previously served as a Senator from 2002 to 2011 on the Agricultural Panel.
Margaret Murphy O’Mahony – Fianna Fáil
The TD was eliminated on the sixth count in Cork South West.
First elected as a TD in 2016, she was initially a member of Cork County Council.
John Brassil – Fianna Fáil
John Brassil had said early in the count it would take ‘a miracle’ for him to be re-elected in Kerry. He lost out to his colleague Norma Foley for the final seat.
The party had run three candidates in the constituency.
Kevin ‘Boxer’ Moran – Independent
Kevin ‘Boxer’ Moran lost his seat in Longford-Westmeath.
Moran had been a member of the Independent Alliance (IA) and a junior minister for the OPW but left the IA ahead of this election.
Shane Cassells – Fianna Fáil
Cassells lost out in Meath West. Though he topped the poll for his party four years ago, he lost out on the third count.
Cassells was the party spokesperson for local government and a member of the Public Accounts Committee.
Timmy Dooley – Fianna Fáil
Fianna Fáil’s Timmy Dooley is another high profile casualty after losing his seat in Clare.
The race went down to the tenth count with no TDs elected and Dooley was squeezed out when his party colleague Cathal Crowe was elected along with Independent Michael McNamara, Sinn Fein’s Violet-Anne Wynne and Joe Carey of Fine Gael.
Dooley was a member of Fianna Fáil’s front bench and was among the party’s most well-known faces, but was sanctioned last year as a result of the ‘Votegate’ controversy.
Seán Kyne – Fine Gael
The government’s chief whip lost his seat in Galway West, where he’d been a TD since 2011.
Pat Deering – Fine Gael
The Carlow-Kilkenny candidate was first elected to Dáil Eireann in 2011, two years after taking a seat on Carlow County Council.
He was eliminated on count 7 in the five-seater. His running mate John Paul Phelan took the third seat.
John Curran – Fianna Fáil
The 59-year-old was eliminated on the ninth count in Dublin Mid-West to the benefit of an extremely surprised Gino Kenny of Solidarity/People Before Profit (who had prematurely conceded on Sunday).
Elected to the Dáil in 2002, he lost his seat in 2011 but was returned again in 2016.
A former minister of state and Oireachtas committee chair, the 59-year-old’s political career continues its rollercoaster journey.
Eugene Murphy – Fianna Fáil
The Roscommon-Galway TD entered politics after a media career with Shannonside Northern Sound where he was a producer and presenter. He was elected to the Dáil in 2016.
He was eliminated on the sixth and final count, beaten by the Sinn Féin candidate Claire Kerrane for the third seat.
Frank O’Rourke – Fianna Fáil
The Celbridge man lost out in Kildare North on the sixth count. His running mate James Lawless took the fourth and last seat there for the party.
A new TD in 2016, he was the junior spokesperson on financial services, government and procurement.
Pat Casey – Wicklow
The Wicklow TD, who was first elected in 2016, was eliminated on the 11th count.
Seamus Healy – Independent
An independent TD, Healy won a seat in 2000 for Tipperary but lost it in 2007 before being re-elected in 2011 with the Workers and Unemployed Action party.
He was re-elected in 2016 as an Independent.
He was eliminated in the competitive constituency on the seventh count.
Jan O’Sullivan – Labour
Famous for last-minute comebacks, the Labour stalwart didn’t have the transfers this time out and lost her seat in Limerick City on the eighth count.
A former minister, she first won that seat in 1998 and has held onto it in every single election since.
Fiona O’Loughlin – Fianna Fáil
A newcomer in Kildare South last time out, she became the party’s spokesperson on equality, immigration and integration.
She lost out on the eighth and final count.
Independent Cathal Berry, who ran on a platform including restoring pay to Defence Forces personnel, took the last seat in the constituency which is home to the Curragh Camp army base.
- Additional reporting Adam Daly, Sinéad O’Carroll and Rónán Duffy
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“The home of the braaaaaaave, and the land, of the…… Incarcerated”
1% of the American population!
Beggars belief. But their prison system is outsourced to private firms so there is profit in prisons.
Silly comment. There’s the same incentive in the Public sector to prolong useless, bloated and inefficient services. The Private sector doesn’t try or sentence the prisoners. The Private sector is far more efficient.
It’s clear you’ve read nothing about private prisons William – a silly comment. Like most alliances between the public (legal) and private (prison) sectors, it’s one open to serious corruption. It’s not the sole existence of private prisons that’s wrong, it’s the relationship between them and public sector officials and how they lobby to have tougher laws and minimum sentencing. So, yes, you’re correct they don’t sentence prisoners directly, but they play their role in creating the laws that put them there in the first place.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-donnelly/private-prisons_b_1097667.html
Your link hadn’t a shred of evidence there was any corruption. Claiming that somehow there are more prisoners because the prisons are private is just conspiracy theory nonsense. Are doctors and private hospitals spreading Cancer? ……………….. Funnily enough – yes says the conspiracy theory nutters.
You’re getting desperate trying to take down my point by suggesting it’s a conspiracy theory. And if you can’t spot the clear potential for corruption in the opening paragraph you’ve obviously dug yourself in very deep.
Only the conservative right seem to have few/no problems with private prisons since they conform to their corporatism bias. Even the libertarian right recognises there are major issues.
But you’re probably a lost cause.
Lobbying of politicians and financial support for their campaigns occurs in all countries. Knowing that doesn’t create a corrupt conspiracy. Your logic is flawed and your argument contains not a shred of evidence of corruption. That makes you a conspiracy theory nutter.
The very idea that elected politicians take a few thousand dollars for their political campaigns and then purposely try and get more people into prison and for longer on the back of that donation is a theory for the deeply deluded and it’s probably more to do with your hatred of the US than anything else.
So any critic of private prisons is a hater of the US? You got your list of go-to aspersions beside you?
“Earlier this year in Louisiana, a plan by Gov. Bobby Jindal (R-LA) to privatize prisons narrowly failed in a legislative committee by a vote of 13 to 12. The 12 members of the House Appropriations Committee who voted to approve the prison privatization plan have received more than three times more money from private prison donors than the 13 members who voted against the plan, according to an analysis of data from the Louisiana Ethics Administration and the National Institute on Money in State Politics. Gov. Jindal himself has taken nearly $30,000 from the private prison industry.”
=
“conspiracy theory nutter”
Your quote from the link as I’ve already said doesn’t offer a shred of evidence for anything. Industries give politicians campaign donations. So? It’s not alone illegal but regarded as patriotic.
Gov. Jindal presumably was elected by the majority of the people of Louisiana, a poor state I might add, and gets donations from businesses, so what? You can’t extrapolate from that he wants more prisoners in jail to boost the private prison sector because he gets a donation. YOU have to prove a link. I’ve already said it’s absurd that someone getting a €20,000 donation for TV adds etc.. would then try and get longer and more sentences for prisoners because of that.
Your “logic” is standard fare for conspiracy theory nutters.
It’s not alone NOT illegal
Don’t mind William, he doesn’t like evidence even when it hits him right in the face. He’s also proven incapable of connecting very simple dots and using critical thinking. He’s the perfect subject for propaganda experiments.
William – you seem to think that politicians are a separate breed of human immune from the influence of money on their decision making. The idea that people and companies give money to politicians out of a sense of patriotism (a sentiment that doesn’t encourage logical thinking as it is) is absolutely absurd.
Companies explicitly donate political money to influence decisions and policy. That is the point of lobbying. They want favourable politicians in office. That’s not a conspiracy.
Here’s more ‘conspiracy’ literature on top of that from earlier.
http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/lpr_15.htm
The point is that you don’t view politicians receiving money from vested interests and their decisions being apparently favourable to those vested interests as corruption. Instead, you call it ‘patriotism’. And call me a conspiracy theorist. I obviously won’t convince you but I think most people recognise the potential problem. Hence the regular calls during general elections for more transparency and greater regulation of political donations. But that’s just part of the ‘conspiracy’, eh?
@William, there is a huge difference between illegal/legal and right/wrong.
Also conspiracy theorist is to open minded as terrorist is to freedom fighter. It is a label created to silence. Not asking questions and accepting things as they are enables the truly evil in our society to prosper. Embrace the ability to think for yourself.
Yeah. Like the BP oil well blowout. Only 5,000 gallons per day, they said.
That’s much more efficient than the hundreds of thousands of barrels per day that was actually leaking.
Private sector is very efficient.
Pay the CEO 12,000 times the wage of the average worker—because he does 12,000 times as much work, right?
Funny shite people think about the efficient private sector.
William, you honestly believe that “patriotic” corporations make massive contributions to politicians and expect nothing in return?
That they do it out of “patriotism”?
And you’re calling other people “nutters”?
YOU have to prove the conspiracy. That’s the way logic works, everything else is just BS.
Crossing a busy road while blindfolded is dangerous and puts you at risk of death. I don’t need to prove that do I?
The first paragraph alone is very misleading …’Currently there are 2.2 million prisoners in America. That is 1.6 million more than in Russia, 2.1 million more than the UK and 600,000 more than China’
a) are there any reliable figures for Russia and China?
b) Actual numbers are no real indicator, percentage of population would be …
It reminds me of a line in Escape to Victory where the German Commandant says that Germany doesn’t recognise Poles and Czechs as prisoners of war “they’re in labour camps. Officially they don’t exist”.
Russia and China only too happy to adopt a similar stance – if they don’t call someone a prisoner they aren’t counted as one.
Creative accounting at its finest.
Two morons desperately trying to deny reality due to a lack of braincells.
China executes people for non-murder offences, so they’re not in prison. China harvests organs from executed prisoners. Do you think China and Russia have an Innocence Project? I suspect that neither China or Russia are much concerned about ordinary crime, they’re both very corrupt. Even in Portugal a policeman told a friend, “We’re here to protect the state, not you”. You can’t compare totally different societies with each other and draw simple conclusions. There’s lies, damned lies and statistics.
China and Russia? Or you just a dick?
Yeah. It’s not so bad I beat my wife and put her in the hospital….my cousin KILLED his wife!
William, you’re a sketch.
Let’s get to the point, William. Why are you so opposed to people freeing innocent citizens from prison?
What is the harm in that? You certainly seem to have a chip on your shoulder about the Innocence Project. What, exactly is it that they do that you find so disagreeable. And leave fecking China and Russia out of it, since they’re not relevant.
Go ahead, William. Tell us why innocent people should be forced to serve their sentences.
Why don’t you learn to read seamus? I think the Innocence Project is an excellent idea.
Worked with the Innocence Project last summer in Washington, D.C. It’s an incredible project and virtually every case I worked on was appalling. What struck me most was, when an exoneree was released from prison, some after 10/15 years, how non-bitter they all were. Literally I thought they’d want to kill the people who put them in prison. But unfailingly they were so philosophical and thankful. Much bigger people than I could ever be. A very worthwhile project.
Sorcha that’s fantastic! I am a member over five years! Shame it’s only in the US.
I wish people would realise that not everyone on death row is guilty.
The people that are now free deserve serious amounts of money,although nothing could repay them.
To date 317 people are free because they did not do the crime they were put on death row for. Imagine that happened you.
Nobody knows how many innocent people died.
Blackstones formulation means not one should have!
This is why the death penalty needs to be banned for this reason alone.
GCD Law school has a branch of the innocence project directly affiliated with the us one. When I was studying law my peers worked on Irish cases and did us placement too. You should look into it. I think If u are not a student there you need to be a barrister or solicitor to offer your pro bono services
Ok so the US justice system has a few flaws. What country’s doesn’t? Some of Ireland’s judicial mistakes are embarrassing.
True but then again Ireland happily does not have the death sentence…..
That’s nonsense with no basis in fact.
Barry Scheck is a brilliant lawyer – does a lot of pro bono work. Even appeared for O J Simpson.
Indeed, he exposed how the prosecution were grossly distorting what the forensic evidence actually was. The prosecution repeatedly referred to DNA and blood evidence “matching” Simpson which was totally misleading as some of it would have “matched” 10% of the human race i.e. a Black African Male. Plus he exposed the LAPD as a crowd of cheats and chancers who blatantly fiddled with the evidence.
Barry scheck I think also defended Louise wardward in Boston in 1997 I think.
I firmly believe OJ Simpsons son killed her anyway! He just took the rap.
If people took the time to read about the innocence project maybe they would change their mind.
The problem is that is has become like the military industrial complex. There are so many people employed by the current system and so much money involved that its impossible to change anything for the better.
How come that same excuse can’t be applied to other countries then? There are paid police, lawyers and judges in every country.
But there are not for-profit prisons.
The for profit prison industry provides boilerplate legislation for state government to pass, which they do as it’s a business that brings jobs to their electoral disctricts, madatory sentencing for minor offences and multiple counts. Next thing you know you have millions of prisoners incarcerated in conditions designed only to extract maximum profit from the funding they get from the taxpayer rather than any actual policy goal (like preventing recidivism by allowing them to learn employable skills for example) and you have an insane spiral defended by the delusional ideologically pure like yourself.
Privatization is the big problem of America’s prison system. The prison service is a big business like everything else in that country. Local county’s are given quotas for the number of prisoners incarcerated, so many inmates are sent in on life term for trivial nonviolent offences such as personal narcotics possession.
These private prisons produce anything from military uniforms to electronic components for drones that kill innocent families in Afghanistan and Pakistan, The majority of inmates are also black Slave labour is alive and well in the United States in 2014.
The police, prosecutors and judges are not privatized, they catch and sentence so your point is invalid.
Without being racist, the majority of crminals are black,which has inevitable consequences
3/4 of black people in prison are there for drug offences. Who’s fault is that?
It’s pretty well documented that in instances of cocaine posession, blacks are sentenced to longer terms for the same amount of drugs than their white counterparts. I didn’t make this up:
http://www.sentencingproject.org/template/page.cfm?id=128
In answer to your “Who’s fault is that?” It appears to be a result of the venerable “War on Drugs”.
They need to stop the death penalty until they reform their prison system
I worked with a man named Bernard Baron who spent 23 years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit. His eventual release is due to work by The Innocence Project. One of the most inspirational men I ever had the pleasure of meeting. Google his story, a heartbreaking and inspiring read.
Looks like they play the system to get guilty men free.
No, they simply use DNA evidence – which doesn’t lie.
Eh David, do you just read the title and the take a wild stab at a response???
David, how about admitting that you know nothing about this subject?
“Land of the free”
A lot of federal penitentiary’s are located in well to do areas, the prison population counts on the census so the local authorities are allocated resources and funding based on population. Also the county jails make money of the prisoners by having them work, they transfer the prisoners wherever a prison runs short of labour. Only the federal prisons are paid by the taxpayer, the rest are run by private companies.
Have watched the Documentaries – The Innocence Project. They really do fantastic work. Great to see it getting more publicity.
Leave them deal with it themselves. It’s none of our business. Fools worry about yanks.
have your say