Andrew Carey
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ARRIVING at the Limerick count centre at the University of Limerick Sports Arean, Fianna Fail General Election candidate and Limerick County constituency poll topper Niall Collins has said that that the “hard work” done between elections has paid off for his party who have almost doubled their candidate return in Friday’s election.
With all boxes opened and tallied in the county constituency, Collins returned with 12,085 first preference votes with the likely quota set at 10,977.
65 per cent of the electorate turned out for Friday’s election and gave the outgoing TD 28 per cent of the vote.
Fine Gael candidates Patrick O’Donovan, a sitting TD in the constituency and his party stablemate and local councillor Tom Neville have taken a combined 37 per cent of the first preference votes.
Deputy O’Donovan has so far returned almost 8,500 first preference votes while Cllr Neville, son of outgoing TD Dan Neville, is sitting in third place with just under 8,000.
In a constituency where transfers are still likely to decide the final order, Independent candidate Emmett O’Brien is still not out of the running despite a tallied first preference gap of in the region of 2,500 votes.
