The three incumbent candidates – Ivana Bacik, Lynn Ruane and David Norris – lead Trinity’s Seanad race after the third count, with Joseph O’Gorman and Keith Scanlon now eliminated.
O’Gorman, the strategic development officer of Trinity’s Central Societies Committee, was eliminated with 183 votes after the second count, while Scanlon – an engineer – exited in the third count with 297 votes.
Abbas Ali O’Shea and Derek Byrne were eliminated in the first count.
Norris and Bacik have a commanding lead, with 3,728 and 3,542 votes respectively. Ruane remains in third place with 2,825 votes. Hugo MacNeill, the former rugby international and boss of Goldman Sachs Ireland, is currently fourth with 2,081 votes.
O’Gorman’s three second preferences will now be distributed. No candidate has yet reached the quota of 3,761.
Earlier this month, 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, while 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.
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.
