Eugene Murphy vows to campaign for Seanad seat

Outgoing Senator Eugene Murphy has conceded defeat in Roscommon Galway constituency, and declared his intention to campaign for a seat in the Seanad.

As the final tallies of the 124 boxes in the constituency were announced, the clear leader was Maurice Fitzpatrick on 11,847 first preference votes.

Some distance behind him, but also ahead of the rest of the field, were sitting TD Claire Kerrane of Sinn Féin at 7,930, and Martin Daly, Fianna Fáil, at 7,252, a first-time candidate.

Fianna Fáil chose a single-candidate strategy for the Roscommon-Galway constituency, and Daly, a GP from Ballygar, emerged victorious narrowly at a convention, beating Murphy by just eight votes. Subsequently, Murphy opted to leave the party to run as an Independent.

Murphy was one of the first candidates to appear at the count centre, and was on site when the final tallies came in.

He told the Westmeath Independent that he was “disappointed, but that's life”. He noted that he got 11% of the first preference votes, “but that's not enough”, and that the numbers “won't be sufficient to narrow the gap” with Daly or Kerrane.

He said he lost a lot of votes to Fitzmaurice in the last couple of days, as the poll topper “did a huge canvass” in his area. He also said that though many people had told him he would get most of the second preference transfers from Fitzmaurice, he doesn't expect this to pan out in this election as Fitzmaurice doesn't have a large surplus this time around.

He said his next step will be to seek a Seanad nomination. He said Fianna Fáil “would not give me the nomination before the election, otherwise I would have supported Martin Daly”, so he had no option but to run as an Independent.

While it will be difficult to secure a nomination as an Independent, “I'm always an optimist”.

Follow our live blog on the election counts for more updates throughout the day.