Fianna Fail’s Ni Mhurchu ‘humbled’ with vote lining her up for MEP seat

Fianna Fail European election candidate Cynthia Ni Mhurchu has said she is “absolutely honoured” to have received enough number one votes to put her in fourth position in her five-seat constituency.

Ms Ni Mhurchu, an Irish speaker who co-hosted the 1994 Eurovision Song Contest, said they ran a “military-style” campaign for three months up to polling day.

On her status as a so-called celebrity candidate, she said she was “chuffed to get any label” and would not mind being called “mother or slogger or grafter or lawyer”.

“The celebrity factor obviously helped but only with an older cohort, and obviously we know that more people came out to vote,” she said at the Nemo Rangers GAA Club in Cork.

“But funnily enough, when I was canvassing younger people, they actually responded to the fact that I wanted to be positive, centrist, slightly left of centre, but we actually wanted to get a lot of work done for the south east and the rest of Ireland South.”

Fine Gael’s Sean Kelly became the first of five MEPs in the 10-county constituency to be elected after two days of sorting and counting.

He surpassed the quota of 114,761 with 8,000-odd votes to spare.

The former GAA president was hoisted into the air as the results were announced, surrounded by his family and party colleagues.

Of Mr Kelly’s surplus transfers, his running mate John Mullins received 2,633 votes, while Fianna Fail’s Billy Kelleher received 1,963 votes.

Several people have remarked on the erratic nature of transfers in Ireland’s European election.

Ms Ni Mhurchu, a Carlow native, said she felt her vote was “primarily driven by the region” in the south east, but also that she is “transfer friendly” and has an appeal “across the board”.

“I’m very humbled by the amount of first preference votes that I got. I think it’s testament to the huge, huge campaign that we ran with Martin O’Brien as the campaign director,” she said.

“We actually got ahead, I believe, of the other candidates because I was nominated on March 7 and it went live on the Independent either that day or the next day.

“But it was a real hitting the ground from that point on and we actually canvassed from the start.

“So that’s about three months of canvassing, so that’s seven days a week, hundreds of towns, cities and villages.”

The second to seventh count results did not see anyone elected, and so the candidates with the lowest vote share, Ciaran O’Riordan, Christopher Doyle, Ross Lahive, Graham de Barra, Cian Prendiville and Una McGurk, were eliminated respectively.

Returning officer Martin Harvey said candidates were be eliminated one at a time, rather than in groups due to how close their vote share was to one another.

“Three different people will check and give their opinion on who can be eliminated, can they be eliminated together,” he said.

“We’ve an e-count system here on the computer and then the four minds are put together who’ve done the calculations, and we check to see are we all right, and I’m glad to tell you we’re always right. We always have the same answer.”

Mr Kelleher is expected to reach the quota around Wednesday afternoon, with a battle on between five candidates for the other four seats.

There are just a thousand votes separating Independent TD Michael McNamara; Ms Ni Mhurchu; and outgoing MEP and ex-Co Wexford TD Mick Wallace.

Sinn Fein TD Kathleen Funchion and the Green Party’s Grace O’Sullivan are also in the running, with the transfers of Ms Funchion’s running mate Paul Gavan and Mr Kelly’s running mate John Mullins expected to be crucial.

“I don’t see us being out of here until Thursday at lunchtime at the earliest,” Mr Harvey said on Tuesday.

Asked whether there was a children’s fun day planned in the hall for Thursday, he gestured to the count and said: “This is a fun day.”

Mr Harvey said that some of the staff reckon the count could finish on Wednesday, and added: “If we can save the fun day, wouldn’t that be great?”