Election 2024 — Seán Kelly the first MEP elected as Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael vie for top spot

On Monday night, in the Ireland South constituency, the country elected its first of 14 MEPs. 

We’ll have live updates here on all the races as counts continue across the country.

At a glance

• 930 of 949 council seats have now been filled
• Fine Gael’s Seán Kelly has become the first MEP elected, topping the poll in Ireland South on the first count.
• Luke ‘Ming’ Flanagan topped the poll in the Midlands North-West constituency, but no candidate there has reached the quota just yet. 
• After 13 counts, no candidate has yet been elected in the Dublin constituency. Barry Andrews and Regina Doherty are best placed to be elected as MEPs there, with Niall Boylan and Lynn Boylan holding on to the other two positions.
• No candidate in the Limerick mayoral race has reached the quota either. After 8 counts, Independent John Moran leads his fellow Independent Helen O’Donnell by around 5,000 votes.
• Follow all the results as they happen at the Irish Examiner election hub.

9.15am

To Carlow now, where a second recount is due to take place amid an extremely close race for the final two council seats of this seven-seater. 

The last recount had Fine Gael’s Brian O’Donoghue on 894, Sinn Féin’s Jim Deane on 893, and Fine Gael’s Catherine Callaghan on 892. The result of the second recount will not be announced until later this morning

8.45am

With only a couple votes separating Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael in the race to become the biggest party in local Government, Irish Examiner  Political Editor Elaine Loughlin reports that Taoiseach Simon Harris has told members of his own party that Fine Gael is on track to win 245 local seats and will see four MEPs elected.

In a voice note sent to Fine Gael candidates this morning, Simon Harris described the results as “incredible” but added that the work continues and he is back at his desk.

He said: “I’m really encouraged by the results, to have polled more first preference votes than any other party in the local elections for what I think is only the second time in the history of our country, to have polled more first preference votes in the European elections than any other party is a testament to your hard work, the work we’ve done on the ground, and the listening and responding we have done to key issues and concerns being raised by people and particularly over the last number of weeks.”

In a message sent to a Fine Gael candidates WhatsApp group, Mr Harris said he has been Taoiseach for 63 days and in that time actions have been taken in a number of areas including migration.

8.10am

Here’s a quick recap of where things stand in race to become Limerick’s first ever directly elected mayor.

After 8 counts, and the distribution of Labour Candidate Conor Sheehan’s votes, John Moran (Ind) is on 19,719. 

In second place is Helen O’Donnell (Ind) on 14,288, while Dee Ryan (FF) is third on 12,937.

In fourth is Daniel Butler (FG) on 11,337 and Maurice Quinlivan (SF) is on 9,528.

Count 9 will take place later this morning.

7.20am

While most count centres closed again for the night between 10pm and 11pm, some continued beyond that. 

To begin this morning, let’s recap some overnight developments:

• Catch up on all of Monday’s events here