A first count emerged from the Dublin constituency late on Sunday night.
Both Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael can now be very confident of taking a seat each in Dublin, with Barry Andrews and Regina Doherty comfortably ahead of the rest of the field on 62,147 and 61,344 first-preference votes respectively.
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There had been some trepidation within Fine Gael that Ms Doherty, being based on the northside, would struggle to get the party’s traditional vote from the south of the county. This fear has proven ill-founded.
Incumbent MEP Barry Andrews, who has topped the poll in Dublin, said the result is ‘positive’ for Fianna Fáil.
‘It’s very positive for Fianna Fáil. We are clearly competitive in a four-seat constituency in Dublin.’
With the quota at 75,000, the transfers will be divided out on Monday.
Ms Doherty, who got 61,344 first preferences, said on Sunday night she was ‘bloody delighted’.
Sinn Féin’s Lynn Boylan will breathe a sigh of relief, having secured a respectable 35,431 first preferences, which will give her some breathing space ahead of the rest of the pack.
In fourth was Ciarán Cuffe of the Greens with 32,204 first-preference votes. And it now appears that Niall Boylan of Independent Ireland will struggle to take a seat as he is essentially tied with Labour’s Aodhán Ó Ríordáin.
Independent Ireland sources had been bullish about Boylan’s chances of being elected but he will struggle to pick up enough transfers as he faces strong leftwing candidates for the last seat.
Clare Daly was next in the queue at 26,855, and Bríd Smith came after her with 21,577, meaning that Ms Daly may still be in with a shout of a seat.
Elsewhere, candidates were relying on incomplete tallies to figure out who will win Ireland’s 14 European Parliament seats.
‘Anybody who tells you they know what is going on is lying to you,’ said one source.
In the South constituency, returning officer Martin Harvey said there were around 715,000 ballot papers and 250 staff.
But, despite having the same number of candidates and count staff as last year, it was ‘unlikely’ the first count would be completed by late on Sunday night.
‘We want to just be careful,’ Mr Harvey said.
Proportional representation means counting could go on for days before the five seats in the ten-county constituency are filled. Nonetheless, some clear trends are emerging in all three count centres at time of writing.
In the five-seater Midlands-North-West constituency, the count is likely to be a long-drawn-out affair.
There is now a widespread belief that Fianna Fáil’s Barry Cowen and Fine Gael’s Maria Walsh should be elected, along with Independent Luke ‘Ming’ Flanagan.
Ms Walsh is said by sources to be ‘going very well’.
Fine Gael sources are also reasonably confident that the name recognition of former jockey and Dancing With The Stars winner Nina Carberry may see her over the line as a second candidate.
Lisa Chambers is also said to be performing as strongly as her running mate Mr Cowen in certain parts of the constituency.
Sinn Féin could be in serious trouble here with numerous reports from different sources that its two candidates – Chris McManus, who was co-opted into the Parliament when Matt Carthy became a TD, and running mate, Michelle Gildernew, who came down from the North – were both polling very poorly.
Several sources indicated the two candidates were getting only 2%-3% of first-preference votes in a variety of areas.
Elsewhere, Independent Ireland’s former RTÉ Midlands correspondent Ciarán Mullooly is ‘performing strongly’ in the hunt for the final seat.
‘We’d be disappointed if Ciarán doesn’t get in,’ said one person close to the party.
It is understood that while he has performed poorly in Donegal, he has done well across the midlands and should be competing strongly for a final seat.
Several sources said there is a real possibility Sinn Féin may end up with no seats in this region. Meanwhile, in the five-seater Ireland South constituency, the returning officer said that it would take ‘a miracle’ to finish the first count by Sunday night.
However, there is an expectation that both Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael should win a seat in this five-seater constituency, with both Seán Kelly of Fine Gael and Billy Kelleher of Fianna Fáil both set to keep their seats.
Mr Kelly was said to be so relaxed that he went to the Munster hurling final instead of hanging around the count centre in Nemo, Cork, waiting for a first count.
One candidate said that they expected Mr Kelly could get 20% of first-preference votes, which would mean that there would potentially be a large transfer of votes from him once he gets over the line.
A Green Party source said that the pair had ‘raked it in’, with a ‘huge’ amount of votes for the two longtime MEPS.
Independent candidate and TD Michael McNamara is also said to be going well and is expected to take a strong transfer from candidates such as Independent Ireland’s Eddie Punch, and may take transfers from candidates close to him regionally.
One source pointed out that ‘Sinn Féin were not transfer friendly’ on a good day and that if Kathleen Funchion was polling at roughly the same as her running mate Paul Gavan, that they would have to ‘wait a good length of time’ before one of them was eliminated and they received transfers to see if they were still in the race for a final seat.
Independents 4 Change MEP Mick Wallace is said to be ‘defying expectations’ and is one of the dogs with a strong fight for the final seat in Ireland South.
The Green Party’s Grace O’Sullivan said ‘it feels like it’s slipping away’, in reference to keeping her MEP seat, although she added that she was still hopeful of getting transfers.
Ms O’Sullivan said ‘there is a lot of shifting sands’ after the election results, and that it was possible that Taoiseach Simon Harris would call an early election.
‘Things have shifted in people’s minds, so I’ve come up here to Cork and I’m getting a sense that the tide is going out, in a way.’
