NEWLY elected TDs in all three of the major parties held their first parliamentary meeting yesterday following the general election at the weekend.
In Donegal, two Fianna Fáil TDs were elected; Charlie McMcConalogue and Pat ‘the Cope’ Gallagher’, who lost his seat in 2020.
Sinn Féin TDs, Pearse Doherty and Padraig MacLochalinn were both returned to the Dáil.
Charles Ward, 100% Redress Party, also took a seat.
Fine Gael failed to retain its seat.
The separate gatherings of Fianna Fáil, Sinn Féin and Fine Gael signal beginning of the process of negotiating the next coalition government.
Fianna Fáil won the most seats in the Dáil (48), while Sinn Féin – the main opposition party in the last Dáil – won 39.
Fine Gael, which has been in coalition with Fianna Fáil since 2020, was third with 38 seats.
Those two parties seem best placed to form a new government, but Sinn Féin insists it will still be involved in the coalition talks.
Candidates fought it out for 174 seats in the Dáil, with 88 needed to secure a majority.
Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael combined have 86.
First preference percentage share for the largest three parties was: Fianna Fáil 21.9 per cent, Fine Gael 20.8 per cent, Sinn Féin 19.0 per cent.
Turnout for the election was 59.7 per cent, the lowest in more than a century.
Fianna Fáil’s deputy leader Jack Chambers told RTE’s Morning Ireland on Monday that he did not expect a new government to be formed before Christmas.
But he said he did not expect talks to take five months like the last time.
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