The decision of the superior courts to declare as spoiled voting papers that commence with ‘2’ for a candidate, then a run of numbers, eg, 2, 3, 4 for preferences, but with no preference marked ‘1’, is regrettable. In the count that was being contested, the ‘2’ had been treated by the returning officer as the first preference of the voter, and so on.

We have had town government since the Normans came here, 800 years ago. On the cusp of the centenary of 1916, the Fine Gael Minister for the Local Government of the day abolished the ‘bottom’ tier of local government, with the support of the joint-principal opposition party, Fianna Fáil.