All three sitting MEPs look set to lose their seats

All three sitting MEPs in Dublin looked set to lose their seats after a stunning debut by Sinn Féin’s Lynn Boylan dramatically upset voting patterns in the constituency.

While official results could not be declared because voting was continuing in some other European states, all indications were that Boylan had topped the poll and would take the first seat although not necessarily on the first count.

Ms Boylan, a first-time candidate in Dublin who previously stood unsuccessfully in Kerry, arrived at the RDS count centre at 9pm to a rapturous welcome from supporters and conceded she never expected to poll so strongly.

“There’s a real anger out there. I hope Enda Kenny and Eamon Gilmore are listening and that they reflect on that because that anger is palpable and it’s reflected in the votes. People like what Sinn Féin are saying,” she said.

Sinn Féin deputy leader Mary Lou McDonald said however the result was not unexpected.

“Other people may have been surprised by all this but let me tell you I’m not a bit surprised because I know what the people of Dublin saw in Lynn what I see in her,” she said.

Fine Gael’s Brian Hayes, currently a junior minister, was in line to take the second seat and only the outgoing MEP Nessa Childers, running as an Independent after parting from Labour, looked to have any chance of being returned.

On exit polls and early tallies, she was fighting for the last seat in the three-seater constituency, up against the Green Party’s Eamon Ryan and Fianna Fáil’s Mary Fitzpatrick, with the sitting MEP Paul Murphy of the Socialist Party next in line but looking almost certain to lose out.

Outgoing Labour MEP Emer Costello all but conceded defeat early in the evening. “It’s disappointing and it certainly looks like it’s going to be a hill that’s maybe a little bit too steep to climb,” she said of her poll.

She said Boylan’s performance was a protest vote.

“This election is very much about a protest. Certainly people are hurting and people were very much focused on local issues. When people come out to protest there are invariably people who will top the poll in this way,” she said.

She said Labour needed time to reflect on the party’s performance both in Dublin and across the country. “I think that what we need to do is to sit back and analyse all of this when we have all of the figures,” she said.

Mary Fitzpatrick, a Dublin city councillor who opted not to defend her council seat but to concentrate solely on her Euro bid, was cautious about her chances of taking the last seat.

“This was always going to be a huge challenge. We haven’t won a seat since 2004 and if you go back to that time there was more than 20 Fianna Fáil TDs in Dublin and there were four seats available at a European level. So I’m delighted to be in contention,” she said.

Ms Fitzpatrick said that she was surprised by the scale of support for Ms Boylan and said it made the election of centrist party representatives all the more important, saying what was needed was “not strong extremist representation, not people who are going out to Europe to either just protest and be negative”.

On her own party’s future in the capital, she said: “We always said it was a 10-year recovery programme in Dublin none of us were ever deluded about it and we are going to continue to build.”