'Three candidates likely to be elected together on final count'

It is likely that the second, third and fourth seats in Longford/Westmeath will all be filled in the final count – likely to be the eighth - an elections expert has revealed.

Des Cawley, a lecturer at AIT, said there is likely to be about three rounds of eliminations until Gabrielle McFadden.

“McFadden has about 1300 votes and there are about 300 of McFadden’s vote that will go back to Boxer Moran, and then of the remainder, quite a few are going to Micheal Carrigy in Longford.

“Then, we move on to Mangan’s elimination ... and then we will reach Heavin’s elimination and then Carrigy’s elimination and that will leave nobody so you are going to fill  seats 2, 3 and 4 at that stage.

“Based on the way the Number 2s are looking – and we just took a sampler – it looks like seats 3 and  will be Joe Flaherty and Peter Burke. Or vice versa.

“At the end, there will probably be a thousand votes between Boxer Moran and Peter Burke.”