Harkin elected to Europe at 4am

Independent Marian Harkin was elected to the final seat in the Midlands NorthWest constituency in the early hours of this morning, after a marathon count and recheck.
With counting finally finished, the four MEP’s elected are Independent, Luke ‘Ming’ Flanagan, FG’s Mairead McGuinness, SF’s Matt Carthy and Marian Harkin.
Drumconrath based MEP, Mairead McGuinness, finished in third position after the first count taking an impressive 14.2 per cent of the vote and was elected on the fifth count.
Local Fianna Fail senator, Thomas Byrne was eliminated following the sixth count bringing his FF running mate, Pat The Cope Gallagher over 2000 votes behind Marian Harkin in the battle for the fourth and final seat.
Following Matt Carthy's election on the eight count and the distribution of his surplus, the gap had narrowed to just 275 votes.This led to a nail biting recheck of votes, which saw Harkin take the final seat at around 4am this morning on the ninth count.
Carrickmacross native, Matt Carthy reached the quota on the eight count having coming second in the first count.
Navan resident, Ben Gilroy of Direct Democracy Ireland and Navan native, Mark Fitzsimons (Ind) were eliminated after the first count along with Cordelia Nic Fhearraigh of Fis Nua, TJ Fay (Ind) and Mark Deary of The Green Party.
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