Abbas Ali O’Shea and Derek Byrne, 2 of the 10 candidates running for the Seanad in the University of Dublin constituency, have been eliminated in the first count.
Provost Patrick Prendergast, the returning officer, made the announcement this afternoon from the count centre in the Business School, with a second count now underway.
Byrne and O’Shea, who received 67 and 81 votes respectively out of a total valid poll of 15,041, will now have their votes redistributed.
Incumbents David Norris, Lynn Ruane and Ivana Bacik received the most votes on the first count, with 3,646, 2,780 and 2,038 respectively.
Hugo MacNeill, the former rugby international and boss of Goldman Sachs Ireland, won 2,038 votes, while Tom Clonan – a retired Irish army captain and academic who revealed a catalogue of discrimination against female soldiers in Ireland’s defence forces – won 1,394 votes.
William Priestly won 1,090 votes, with engineer Keith coming in with 276.
Joseph O’Gorman, the strategic development officer of Trinity’s Central Societies Committee, won just 180 votes. Last week, the Sunday Times reported that O’Gorman has given himself and his partner around €1.3 million in the last four years through the tour company he runs on campus.
Norris is the longest-serving senator on the panel, whilst Bacik is Reid Professor of Criminal Law in the Law School, and is also a former president of Trinity College Dublin Students’ Union (TCDSU). Ruane was elected to the Seanad in 2016 while serving as TCDSU president.
Bacik and Ruane are the only two women who ran in this constituency.
MacNeill, who won 37 caps for Ireland, currently works with the Trinity Centre for People with Intellectual Disabilities. Last year, the Irish Times reported that MacNeill was a member of Trinity’s controversial all-male society the Knights of the Campanile.
Priestley, a director of Our Lady of Lourdes Community Services Group, ran again after losing out in 2016. Byrne, a lecturer in addiction studies in Maynooth University, also announced his candidacy, with engineer Scanlon completing the lineup.
Polls closed at 11am on March 31st, with the count currently taking place in the Dargan theatre in the Trinity Business School. The size of that theatre allows for social distancing to be observed while the count is taking place.
Trinity’s website says that the count is expected to go on until Friday.
Only graduates of Trinity can vote in the University of Dublin constituency. Earlier this month, The University Times reported that students who graduated in 2019 will not be able to vote, as the register of electors for the Seanad will only be updated on June 1st, 2019.
