Independent Collins aims to ‘get things done’

Ironically, a man called Michael Collins was one of the reasons Fine Gael got hammered in West Cork.

There were other issues which conspired against the party, not least that it was deemed foolhardy to run six outgoing candidates in a constituency which had been reduced from a 12 to eight-seater.

However, the party believed that, even on a very bad day, it would return four of them.