"It's in the hands of the Gods" - Clarke

With all of the Longford tallies completed, Sinn Féin TD Sorca Clarke is currently sitting at 5,703 first-preference votes. This puts her fourth overall, but lots of Athlone-based boxes have yet to be tallied.

Speaking to the Westmeath Independent, Deputy Clarke said "I think we all knew that this election was going to have a different dynamic to what the previous one did. Nobody is surprised by that at all. I think the Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael dynamic particularly for Longford is going to get quite interesting as the next few boxes open up and I think it will come down to a very tight margin indeed."

"We're confident, but that said, it's in the hands of the Gods, so we're just going to have to wait and see what the votes actually tell us."

Clarke, who topped the polls in 2020 with 11,848 votes, has said that this campaign was very different.

"This campaign was a lot shorter, it was just three weeks. That said we were very fortunate that the weather held for the vast majority of it. I think we may have had two days that was actually rainy and then one evening where I know it was minus four. But in the scale of things given the time of year, I think we were very fortunate."