Council election votes to be recounted after Supreme Court ruling

Votes cast in Listowel in last year’s election for Kerry County Council will have to be counted again following a Supreme Court ruling.

One of the candidates who narrowly missed out on a seat successfully argued that some of the votes cast shouldn't have been included.

Last year’s local elections were held on the same day as the European election.

The race for seats on Kerry County Council was tight, with former Senator Dan Kiely losing out by just two votes in the end.

A number of votes containing a sequence of numbers not starting with “1” were included by the returning officer and after an unsuccessful legal challenge at Circuit Court level, Mr Kiely decided to go to the Supreme Court

The five-judge panel heard on days where there is more than one election, some people cast their first and second preferences on one ballot paper, putting their third, fourth and fifth on the other.

His counsel claimed the Returning Officer was not entitled to infer a first preference on votes containing the 3,4,5 sequence if they didn’t include the number 1.

And today, the Supreme Court agreed, with four of the five judges ruling there should be a recount.