Search Results for 'Irish general election'

Christmas is essentially a time for looking back but also a time for looking forward.

Last Saturday I was in Salthill for a few hours. It has been about two years since I was in Salthill last. I was amazed again at the grandeur of it; the wide Atlantic breaking in; the long and lovely promenade. 

Last Saturday I was in Salthill for a few hours. It has been about two years since I was in Salthill last. I was amazed again at the grandeur of it; the wide Atlantic breaking in; the long and lovely promenade. 

Speaking this week at a briefing with local newspapers in Castlebar, An Taoiseach Enda Kenny said he fully expects the four sitting Fine Gael TDs from Mayo to be re-elected to the Dáil at the next General Election.

Now that the main event has been done and dusted the small matter of the Senate elections is now gathering momentum as local candidates are chosen to run for office.

“A week is a long time in politics,” former British prime minister Harold Wilson famously said. Four years even longer and in Mayo the change was a lot more dramatic than most would have expected from the last time they stood in the count centre in the Royal Theatre for a general election count. The blue surge over the country turned into a tidal wave in Mayo, with four of the five seats going to Fine Gael. The four Fine Gael candidates took 58.96 per cent of the first preference vote in the county, which translates into 48,170 first preference votes. That is an increase of 5.13 per cent from 2007 or 9,924 votes.

The face of Galway politics will be changed completely over the next 48 hours as the county, across its two constituencies, will return between five to seven new TDs.

If there was ever a constituency which defined the term ‘boringly predictable’ it was certainly Galway East, a place even more beholden to repeating patterns and traditions than its sister electoral area Galway West.

While on a whistle-stop tour of Carlow Kilkenny earlier this week, Labour Party Leader Eamon Gilmore spoke confidently of returning at least one if not two seats for Labour in the constituency in the upcoming general election.