Another strong showing for Labour’s Alan Kelly in Tipperary North

It would be hard to surpass Michael Lowry’s legion of support in Tipperary North, but the Labour Party’s Alan Kelly has had an impressive showing in securing the second Dáil seat in the constituency.

Holding off stiff competition from nearby competitors in Fine Gael’s Phyll Bugler and Fianna Fáil’s Ryan O’Meara, Kelly received 12,230 votes on the tenth count surpassing the quota of 11,442 by nearly 1,00o votes. From the initial tallies it was clear that Kelly would take the seat after Michael Lowry, it was just a matter of when.

Due to various recounts and a series of eliminations, Kelly’s moment didn’t come until Monday afternoon. He arrived to the hall on Sunday evening to great fanfare with his family and supporters in tow. He was ready to be elected that night but unfortunately some very close results between Jim Ryan (Non-Party) and Michael Smith (Fianna Fáil) delayed the celebrations until the following day.

Speaking to the Tipperary Star, Alan said: “I found this election particularly difficult in that there were two candidates in Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael right beside me.

“I’m very thankful to councillor Louise Morgan Walsh and councillor Fiona Bonfield, councillor Michael ‘Chicken’ Brennan and too all my team. I’m now the most experienced member of the parliamentary party. I’m 49 and have been elected in six different national elections now.”

Speaking further on Labour’s involvement in the next Government, he said: “We’ll have to see what the Government formation is I suppose.

“I believe that we should always be positive about that and that we should look at what the options are.

“I think we’ll have to see what the figures are and I believe in talking to other parties and once we do that we’ll have certain red lines and we’ll certainly have a plan in place as to who we’re going to talk to first, like-minded people and then we’ll see about other parties.

“I certainly don’t think we should rule out going into Government, we should be fairly positive about it but it will have to be on our own conditions with our own plan and our own red lines and we’ll have to make sure that this time around those red lines are absolute.”

Alan Kelly previously suggested he would be interested in a ministerial position if the Labour Party were to be part of the new Government.

One of eleven Labour Party candidates to become elected, Kelly performed better than his party leader Ivana Bacik taking home 15.45% of first preference votes compared to Bacik’s 14.29% share.