Childers win sees Labour celebrate another victory

LABOUR celebrated another major victory in the European and local elections after Nessa Childers won a seat for the party in the Ireland East constituency for the first time in 30 years.

Ms Childers was elected on the final count without reaching the quota to claim the last of the three MEP seats, while Liam Aylward’s successful retention of his seat meant Fine Gael was unable to repeat its impressive feat of 2004 in returning their two candidates to the European Parliament.

It marked a great result for Labour in the East constituency – which consists of most of Leinster excluding Dublin, Longford and Westmeath – as well as for Ms Childers personally.

She was a member of Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council for another political party just 12 months ago.

Ms Childers, a daughter of former president Erskine Childers, stood down as a Green Party councillor last August to join Labour. She had previously resigned from Labour after failing to receive a nomination from the party to stand as a candidate in the 2004 local elections.

Ms Childers, a psychologist by profession, received 78,338 first preference votes in her first major election contest to become only the second Labour MEP to represent the constituency since Liam Kavanagh in 1979.

A relative novice on the national political scene, she overcame a number of obstacles highlighted by opponents during the campaign, including her past association with the Green Party, her Dublin base and her self-confessed ignorance of farming issues.

Labour obtained more than 18% of the first preference votes in this election – up over 5% on the party’s performance in Ireland East in 2004.

“I never claimed to be an expert on agriculture,” said Ms Childers last night, although she stressed that reform of the Common Agricultural Policy would be an important issue for her as an MEP.

Outgoing Fine Gael MEP Mairéad McGuinness had been elected on Sunday evening on the first count after exceeding the quota of 107,313 by more than 3,000 votes.

The second Fine Gael candidate, Kilkenny-based senator, John Paul Phelan, failed to edge out either Ms Childers or Fianna Fáil’s sitting MEP Mr Aylward for the final two seats, despite an impressive performance on his first European election outing.

However, Fine Gael had conceded privately since counting began early on Sunday morning that Mr Phelan’s total of 61,851 first preference votes – which left him trailing Mr Aylward by almost 13,000 – would be insufficient to overtake the Fianna Fáil MEP.

Last night, Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny expressed disappointment that the party had failed to hold on to its two seats but was satisfied with the party’s overall performance.

“In a national sense, Fine Gael have outpolled Fianna Fáil for the first time in European elections. We are still the largest [Irish] party in Europe,” said Mr Kenny.

Mr Aylward’s re-election was guaranteed after the distribution of the votes of his eliminated party colleague, Meath TD Thomas Byrne, on the sixth count extended his lead over Mr Phelan as well as allowing him to leap-frog ahead of Ms Childers.

The former Kilkenny TD admitted he had been concerned that his seat was in jeopardy, given the general swing against Fianna Fáil. “It was the hardest campaign I have had to fight in 15 elections,” said Mr Aylward.