Devastating end to Dáil bid for Fiona O'Loughlin
Cllr Veralouise Behan and Senator Fiona O'Loughlin in the Punchestown count hall on Saturday Photo: Aisling Hyland
Senator Fiona O’Loughlin was pipped for the final seat in Kildare South for the second General Election in a row and it was devastating for her.
The Fianna Fáil politican had improved her first preference vote by around 1500 was it still wasn’t enough.
Senator O'Loughlin finished 601 votes behind Labour's Mark Wall with a total of 7094.
As soon as it was accepted, but before the declaration, The Kildare Nationalist approached for an interview but was stopped by her director of elections Richard Meehan who said it was still too raw and to be fair and you could feel the grief.
“We’re stunned,” he said by way of some consolation.
“The Newbridge vote just doesn’t make sense,” he said.
“The town was crying out for a TD, and it doesn’t have one,” he added.
“I’m stunned by that, to be honest,” he said shaking his head.
“There was a very strong performance out of Sinn Féin ahead of expectation, but we couldn’t have done any more. Congrats to all the others,” he said.
Around 6.10pm on Sunday evening, after Kildare South returning officer Eoghan Ryan made the formal declaration for the constituency, we were able to get through her posse of consolation to have a few brief words with the brave candidate, and asked if she would run again.
“I’ll never say never, but I doubt it,” she said.
“I felt I ran a good campaign, and I would’ve hoped for more transfers from Chris Pender (the only other Newbridge candidate in Kildare South), but the Social Democrats and Labour had a pact."
She added: “It seems Newbridge doesn’t want a TD in the town.
“But I do want to thank all who came out to support me."
