Ireland’s Minister for Health has failed to be re-elected and has lost his seat in Wicklow, which he has held since 2011.
Fianna Fail’s Stephen Donnelly is now one of the biggest casualties in the country’s election after he was eliminated in the early hours of Monday morning.
He lost out to the Irish premier’s running mate Richard Timmins, who secured the second seat for Fine Gael in the consistency.
Mr Donnelly faced a tough fight to retain his seat in the constituency after boundary changes saw it reduced from five to four seats.
Mr Timmins benefitted from a huge surplus from the party leader, after he topped the poll with 5,000 votes to share.
Mr Donnelly had a long wait to have his fate confirmed at the count centre in Greystones, with counting finally ending shortly before 5.30am on Monday.
Earlier, Mr Donnelly said it was “always going to be very tight”.
“We knew Simon (Harris) would take a huge vote,” he said.
“The government vote, if you like, in the constituency was strong actually, but when you are sharing a constituency and hometown with a taoiseach and moving from a five-seater to a four-seater, when you put those two things together, obviously, it creates a lot of pressure.
“So I think we all knew it was going to come down to the final seat. It was going to come down to transfers.”
Mr Donnelly was first elected in the constituency as an Independent candidate in 2011.
He went on to help co-found the Social Democrats in July 2015 with Roisin Shortall and Catherine Murphy.
His popularity during the 2016 general election campaign surged, and he topped the poll in Wicklow as a member of the Social Democrats, with 14,348 first preference votes, representing a share of 20.9% of the vote.
Soon after the election, he left the party following a number of disagreements with the co-leaders as he wanted the party to enter Government formation talks with Fine Gael.
However, Ms Murphy and Ms Shortall opposed the move.
After sitting as an Independent for a while, he then joined Fianna Fail in early 2017.
This ultimately led to a dent in his votes in the 2020 general election when his share dropped to 7.7%.
He was eventually elected on the 15th count after three days of counting.
Mr Donnelly was appointed as Minister for Health by party leader Micheal Martin, and held the position throughout the Covid-19 pandemic.
He oversaw the introduction of landmark legislation around mandatory disclosure for patients in the aftermath of the CervicalCheck controversy.
In October, he said he was “laser focused” on having the 2.2 billion-euro National Children’s Hospital opened by the end of next year.
Why are you making commenting on The National only available to subscribers?
We know there are thousands of National readers who want to debate, argue and go back and forth in the comments section of our stories. We’ve got the most informed readers in Scotland, asking each other the big questions about the future of our country.
Unfortunately, though, these important debates are being spoiled by a vocal minority of trolls who aren’t really interested in the issues, try to derail the conversations, register under fake names, and post vile abuse.
So that’s why we’ve decided to make the ability to comment only available to our paying subscribers. That way, all the trolls who post abuse on our website will have to pay if they want to join the debate – and risk a permanent ban from the account that they subscribe with.
The conversation will go back to what it should be about – people who care passionately about the issues, but disagree constructively on what we should do about them. Let’s get that debate started!
Callum Baird, Editor of The National
Comments: Our rules
We want our comments to be a lively and valuable part of our community - a place where readers can debate and engage with the most important local issues. The ability to comment on our stories is a privilege, not a right, however, and that privilege may be withdrawn if it is abused or misused.
Please report any comments that break our rules.
Read the rules here