Troy expects to "comfortably retain" his seat

Fianna Fáil's Robert Troy, who has been a TD for Longford Westmeath since 2011, is optimistic about retaining his seat after this afternoon's tallies, which left him second only to Fine Gael's Peter Burke in this five-seater constituency.

"We don't even have a first count yet, but based on the tallies, I'm going to finish second," Troy explained, "which would indicate that I will comfortably retain my seat. So I'm obviously relieved to see that and I want to take the opportunity to thank the people who put their faith and confidence in me and who have given me the honour, hopefully, to have been elected for the fourth time to Dáil Eireann."

When asked about Fianna Fáil's national performance, Troy said that "Nationally it looks like we're poised to win seats in a number of constituencies."

"The last election I suppose we went against the national trend here by winning two seats and it looks like on this occasion we might be going against a national trend and losing a seat.

"You know, the last seat in this constituency is really a dog dog fight with PR (proportional representation), and you know, who's eliminated, and the geography will have a role to play.

"But there is a quite a large gap for Joe (Flaherty) to make up. So it's hard to see us holding the two seats."