All aboard in Galway West

JUBILANT Fine Gael Candidate Hildegarde Naughton celebrates her election in the Galway West count centre.

Ciara Galvin
Castlebar

It took 14 counts to fill the remaining three seats in Galway West. The constituency bucked national trends, returning two Fine Gael candidates. Sean Kyne and Hildegarde Naughton take seats for the party and mean that this is the first time for Fine Gael to retain two seats in the constituency.
Sean Kyne was pushed over the line by an impressive 2,419 transfers from colleague John O’Mahony and saw him take 10,590 votes at the end, with Naughton receiving 2,105 from O’Mahony’s pot.
Independent Catherine Connolly took a modest 397 in transfers and got the fourth seat with 10,239.
All three candidates were deemed elected without reaching the quota of 10,712.
This is a historic day for Connolly, as she becomes the first elected female Independent since the foundation of the State, and the first female candidate to be elected in the constituency since 1992.
Sinn Fein’s Trevor O’Clochartaigh will feel hard done by, as he had been gaining ground in counts 12 and 13. However, it was expected that he would lose out in the end due to the Fine Gael transfers.
Galway West’s new TDs are Eamon O’Cuiv (FF), Noel Grealish (Ind), Sean Kyne (FG), Catherine Connolly (Ind) and Hildegarde Naughton (FG).