Adrian Kavanagh, 29th April 2011
Fine Gael 3 seats, Fianna Fail 2 seats, Labour Party 2 seats
Elected: Mark Daly FF, John Kelly LB, Diarmuid Wilson FF, Michael W D’Arcy FG, Martin Conway FG, Tom Sheahan FG, Dennis Landy LB (Inside panel candidates underlined)
Having failed to win two seats in the larger Industrial and Commercial constituency, Labour’s prospects of taking two seats here did not appear to be very strong but the party was helped significantly by polling their biggest number of votes on any of the panels in this contest (with Labour potentially gaining significantly from the Sinn Fein votes that seemed to be edge towards Fianna Fail in the Cultural and Education panel, the other panel which did not have a Sinn Fein candidate). Labour was also helped the outside panel/inside panel rule, which dictated that at least three candidates would need to be elected in this contest from both panels. This meant that, with only three candidates remaining in the outside panel by the final counts, Labour’s second strongest candidate, Dennis Landy, was guaranteed a seat at the expense of Mary Fitzpatrick of Fianna Fail (inside panel candidate) even though he was trailing her in terms of vote numbers. On the final effective count (Count 15) Fitzpatrick was ahead of Landy by 9,236 votes but she was the candidate eliminated because of the outside/inside panels rule – that said, transfers from the surpluses of the successful Fine Gael candidates, D’Arcy, Conway and Sheahan, may well have drawn Landy ahead of Fitzpatrick in terms of the vote count in any case.
Fine Gael candidates won a combined number of 434 (or 434,000) first preference votes for this panel (40.8%), while Fianna Fail candidates won 348 (32.7%) and Labour candidates won 233 (21.9%), while the two independent candidates won 49 (4.6%).
This was a disappointing panel for female candidates, with no females being elected despite strong showings from Mary Fitzpatrick and Labour’s Mary Moran. Female candidates won 22.7% of the first preference votes (242).
Once again Munster reclaimed pre-eminence from Connacht-Ulster, with candidates from the Munster region winning 417 votes (39.1%), as against 253 votes (23.7%) for Connacht-Ulster candidates, 205 votes (19.2%) for Leinster candidates and 192 votes (18.0%) for Dublin candidates.
Irish Elections: Geography, Facts and Analyses 
I would have thought Mark Daly was the likely recipient of many SF votes as he had been in 2007, but there again it wouldn’t explain the huge vote for Labour.
The 4% increase in the Labour vote for this panel contest had to come from somewhere and the likelihood is that there was a Sinn Fein vote of some significance for Labour in this contest, in the same way that Sinn Fein appear likely to have rowed in strongly behind Fianna Fail in the Cultural and Educational panel. With secret ballots and with no tallies, as in general elections, this is of course just guesswork, but hopefully somewhat informed guesswork all the same!