History has been made as Colm Keaveney becomes the first Labour TD in Galway East following the ninth and last count in the Galway East constituency.
Following the distribution of Micheal Kitt’s surplus of 994 votes, Keaveney outpolled his nearest challenger Tom McHugh to leave more than 1,200 votes between them in the end.
His supporters, many of them rigged out in red jackets and tops, carried Keaveney shoulder high as he was confirmed as having taken the fourth seat.
Earlier the other three seats in the constituency went to Micheal Kitt of Fianna Fail, Paul Connaughton and Ciaran Cannon of Fine Gael.
It has taken two days to complete the Galway East count with a 10 hour recount, which was called by Fine Gael’s Tom McHugh on Saturday night, was responsible for the counting of votes going into Sunday night.
Keaveney, Connaughton jnr. and Cannon are TDs for the first time while Kitt is the veteran of the four.
There is no doubt that Keaveney is the surprise package and particularly when he polled just over 4,200 first preferences on the first count and looked doomed to failure.
But in one of the biggest twists in the count, he received an unprecedented 2,440 of a transfer from his running mate Lorraine Higgins in Athenry. It caused the shock of the count.
Prior to that, Tom McHugh looked in prime position to take a third FG seat and was likely to be involved in a head to head with Independent Sean Canney but that scenario was changed dramatically when the Higgins transfer emerged.
FULL GALWAY EAST COUNTNumber of seats: 4Electorate: 83,651Total poll: 59,836Spoiled votes: 525Total valid poll: 59,319Quota: 11,856
