Six candidates fight it out for four seats

Bailieborough Cootehill Electoral Area

We've reached the end game of Bailieborough Cootehill electoral area as there are only six candidates left fighting it out for the four remaining available seats - Sarah O'Reilly and Carmel Brady are already elected.

Kristofer Shekleton's 914 votes in the forthcoming count #6 will go a long way to deciding where the spoils will go.

Val Smith seemingly had his work done for the weekend when the first preferences of 1,392 votes were announced early yesterday. The Fine Gael man's total has refused to budge beyond just 32 transfers in the intervening counts. Regardless, his 1,424 looks to be enough to claim a seat even though the quota may be out of reach.

Clifford Kelly leads the charges for Fianna Fáil on 1,308. He will be holding his breath that fellow Kingscourt native Kristofer Shekleton does enough to get him out of reach of the others and secure a seat. It would be surprising if he didn't.

Aiden Fitzpatrick is on 1,294 having benefitted from 40-odd more transfers from Cosgrove than his running mate Niall Smith who is on 1,168. That's a difference of just 126 votes between them.

Stiofán Conaty of Sinn Féin is 50 votes behind Fitzpatrick, sitting comfortably on 1,244.

He's set to be elected any which way, as his running mate Paddy McDonald is bringing up the rear on 978.

The nightmare scenario for Fianna Fáil would be if Shekleton's votes favour McDonald so heavily that he makes up the 190 difference to overtake Smith. It's highly improbable, but given what he did in 2019, not entirely impossible.