Childers favourite to win Euro seat in Ireland East

Nessa Childers is still in the lead after the third count in the Ireland East constituency to win a European Parliament seat for Labour.

Outgoing Fine Gael MEP Mairead McGuinness has secured the first seat after topping the poll with a massive 110,000 votes.

Ms Childers is more than 5,000 votes ahead of Fianna Fáil's Liam Aylward who looks likely to win the third ahead of Fine Gael's John Paul Phelan.

Raymond O’Malley of Libertas has been eliminated and his votes will now be redistributed.

(Third Count) - Distribution of Paddy Garvey’s, Michael Grealy’s and Jim Tallon’s votes

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Nessa Childers (Lab) 80,145

Liam Aylward (FF) 75,124

John-Paul Phelan (FG) 64,169

Thomas Byrne (FF) 31,480

Kathleen Funchion (SF) 27,132

Tomas Sharkey (SF) 21,461

Raymond O’Malley (Libertas) 19,396

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Eliminated: Raymond O’Malley

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Electorate 758,337; Turnout 442,290 (58.32%, -0.18%)

The declared European election results so far are:

Dublin: Fine Gael’s Gay Mitchell, Labour’s Prionsias de Rossa and Socialist Joe Higgins elected.

East: Fine Gael’s Mairead McGuinness elected.