McGuinness retains her MEP seat

Mairead McGuinness at the count centre with Meath-based candidate Thomas Byrne

Ardee woman Mairead McGuinness has retained her European Parliament seat after being elected on the fifth count in the Midlands North West constituency this afternoon.

The Fine Gael MEP was in the count centre in Castlebar to hear the news with her final tally coming to 135,698.

The former Ear to the Ground presenter needed 17,000 votes after the fourth count to meet the quota, whereas Sinn Féin’s Matt Carthy was less than 5,000 votes away.

However, McGuinness leapfrogged him following the elimination of independent Senator Ronan Mullen to join Luke ‘Ming’ Flanagan in Europe.

Carthy, from Carrickmacross, is still likely to take the third seat with sitting MEP Marian Harkin leading the Fianna Fáil duo of Pat ‘The Cope’ Gallagher and Thomas Byrne by around 30,000 votes. If, as expected, Byrne is eliminated then a lot would depend on how the Fianna Fáil pair transfer between each other to determine who takes the final seat.

McGuinness tipped to retain her European seat by topping the poll in this constituency

Mairead McGuinness with local TD Peter Fitzpatrick

Ardee woman Mairead McGuinness is odds-on to retain her European seat in Friday’s elections, according to the results of a new Ipsos MRBI opinion poll published today in the Irish Times.

The poll found that the former Ear to the Ground presenter and Fine Gael candidate had 18% support.

It also predicts that Sinn Féin’s Matt Carthy will join her in Europe as he has been tipped to take 15% of the vote.

The two remaining seats in the Midlands North-West constituency are then likely to go to Fianna Fáil’s Pat the Cope Gallagher and independent Luke ‘Ming’ Flanagan, who both took 12% each.

Their biggest challengers are Marian Harkin (10%), Lorraine Higgins (8%) and Thomas Byrne (8%).

That means that local candidates Mark Dearey of the Green Party (3%) and independent Mark Fitzsimons are unlikely to feature in the overall shake-up, with the latter taking less than half a percent of the vote in the opinion poll, which covered 150 sampling points throughout all constituencies in the Midlands North-West area.