First Count Loughrea LEA: Maher and McClearn elected

The first count in the Loughrea electoral area has been completed and it has resulted in the Fine Gael pair of Michael ‘Moegie’ Maher and Jimmy McClearn being elected having both exceeded the quota.

Fine Gael ran just two candidates in the five-seater electoral area and were 100% successful leading to suggestions that they should have run a third in the interest of the future.

Elsewhere it seems likely that Fianna Fail will return with two seats, namely sitting councillor Ivan Canning in Portumna and Shane Curley in Loughrea who contested the area for the first time.

Veteran independent councillor Pat Hynes looks set to secure the fifth seat but his first preference vote is considerably down on that which he received in 2014.

The distribution of Moegie Maher’s surplus of 428 votes and that will be completed shortly.

Loughrea

Number of seats: 5

Electorate: 18,729

Total poll: 10,503

Spoiled votes: 165

Total valid poll: 10,338

Quota: 1,724

First count:

Michael ‘Moegie’ Maher (FG) 2,152

Jimmy McClearn (FG) 2,045

Shane Curley (FF) 1,581

Ivan Canning (FF) 1,564

Pat Hynes (Ind) 948

Pat Flanagan (FF) 738

Joe Campbell (Aontu) 661

Annmarie Roche (SF) 332

Eoin Madden (Ind) 321

Maher and McClearn elected