All four Clare TDs elected after two days of counting in General Election 2024
Long weekend and 16 counts see all seats filled in the Banner County
Two long days of counting saw all four TDs elected in county Clare by 8pm on Sunday night.
Timmy Dooley and Cathal Crowe of Fianna Fail, Donna McGettigan of Sinn Fein, and Joe Cooney of Fine Gael were all declared elected to Dáil Eireann across Sunday, December 1.
180 ballot boxes, containing some 61,366 ballots, were cracked open 9am Saturday morning, November 30, and counted by 58 tireless staff in the ballroom of Treacy's West County Hotel in Ennis.
A first official count result was given at just a few minutes before 10pm, with the valid poll declared at 60,907 and the quota for election set at 12,182.
None of the 20 candidates running in the four-seat constituency were elected on the first count, but it was clear right from the start, and from the tallies conducted across the day, who would claim them.
Senator Timmy Dooley topped the poll for Fianna Fail from the start with 11,313 first preferences, a clear 3,000 ahead of his party colleague Cathal Crowe, who was out to retain his Dail seat.
Donna McGettigan of Sinn Fein and Joe Cooney of Fine Gael emerged as the contenders for the third and fourth seats, with the only excitement really coming from which of these two serving county councillors would get elected first.
The real shocker of the night came at the expense of outgoing Independent TD Violet Anne Wynne, who had swept the polls and been the first elected in 2020 as a Sinn Fein candidate.
Since her departure from the party in 2022 under a cloud, her chances of re-election were seen as slim, but no one expected her to return just 328 votes in total before her elimination on the third count.
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The count was suspended just before midnight on Saturday night after five counts and the elimination of some independents and smaller fringe candidates, restarting at 9am Sunday morning.
Senator Timmy Dooley, who had previously held a Dail seat in Clare from 2007 to 2020, was the first to be elected on Count 13, late Sunday afternoon.
Cathal Crowe retained his Dail seat by count 15, which also saw deputy Green Party leader Senator Roisin Garvey eliminated.
Her 5,500 votes weren't enough to put any of the last three candidates over the quota, so, as the two with the highest votes, Donna McGettigan and Joe Cooney were deemed elected on the sixteenth and final count, dashing the hopes of Leonora Carey and her family's two generations of Fine Gael representation for Clare.