‘I threw everything at it’ - Niall Blaney is gracious despite defeat in European elections

By Evelyn Cullen

DESPITE a strong polling in Donegal with close to 15,000 first preference votes, about 20% of the total polled in the county, Fianna Fáil’s Niall Blaney will miss out on a seat in the European Parliament.

Although counting was still ongoing yesterday morning when he spoke to the Donegal News, it was clear Senator Blaney was not in contention for one of the five seats.

However, he said he was happy that he did everything he could.

“I threw everything at it,” he said, referring to his mammoth campaign.

Running in the Midlands North West constituency in a field of 27 candidates, he said: “With such a big constituency it’s like a presidential election and I spread myself as far as I could across 40 electoral areas clocking up about 135,000 km on my Audi.

“But no candidate can go round all the doors so you’re depending on the organisation and a lot of people worked hard for me in Donegal. I won’t forget that.”

Describing it as a “fabulous vote” in Donegal, Senator Blaney also expressed gratitude to his “fantastic young team” who worked across social media, finance, PR and overall operations.

Outside the county he picked up a further 15,500 votes giving him a total of 30,387 first preference votes across the whole region.

As a sitting member of Seanad Éireann Mr Blaney said that after a rest he will meet with his team to take stock of what worked, what didn’t work and get straight back to meeting groups in Northern Ireland on issues relating to the border, which is top of his agenda.

Looking at Donegal alone which polled a total of 75,039 votes, party-wise Fianna Fáil got 17,055 votes, Fine Gael had 7,894, Sinn Féin took 16,108, Labour had 1,549, 100% Redress had 7,355, the Green Party 317 votes and Independents/Others polled 24,781.

Among the Independents and also vying for a share of the Donegal vote was Derry man, entrepreneur and former Presidential candidate Peter Casey, who’s been living in Greencastle since 2016.

As we went to press last night, Blaney’s party colleague Barry Cowen was in position to take the third seat just behind Nina Carberry and ahead of sitting MEP Maria Walsh, both Fine Gael candidates.

Independent Luke Ming Flanagan topped the poll with 78,214 votes.

However, with a quota of 113,325 he was yet to be officially elected.

The fifth seat was predicated to go to former RTÉ correspondent and Independent candidate Ciaran Mulooly.

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