0:01

This podcast is brought to you

0:03

by AJ Products, made in Sweden

0:05

for the rest of the world.

0:07

Visit AJProducts.ie to see how we

0:10

can make your workplace work for

0:12

you. This is

0:14

the most important local and European elections

0:16

for a generation. With so many possibilities,

0:18

who do you choose? Does

0:20

anybody actually know who the previous MEPs of Ireland

0:22

are? As mayor, I would

0:24

literally put a boot up somebody's

0:27

backside. How's Richard Bruton rock climbing

0:29

to explain more? If you want to get

0:31

more, if you want your nation's city. It's

0:35

Monday afternoon, June the 10th, and you're

0:37

very welcome to the latest instalment of

0:39

the Inside Politics Election Daily podcast from

0:41

The Irish Times. I'm Hugh Linehan. Counting

0:43

is ongoing in the European elections. The

0:45

end is nigh in the local election

0:47

counts. And we're really just getting started

0:49

in the race to become the first

0:51

directly elected mayor of Limerick. Pat Lee

0:53

is in studio with me and Cormac

0:55

McQuinn is at the RDS. Hello to

0:57

you both. Hello Hugh. Hi

1:00

Hugh. Before we start, I've got a new item, Pat. You'll be delighted

1:02

to hear today on today's podcast.

1:04

I'm calling it with stunning originality,

1:07

Listener's Mailbag. And we

1:09

have a couple of queries in. Do you

1:11

mean our listeners have been in touch with

1:14

us? Our listeners are more than singular now.

1:16

Right. Looking for advice on all

1:19

manner of dilemmas in their personal

1:21

lives. They do, they do, and

1:23

I know you've always wanted to become an

1:25

agony aunt. So now's your opportunity. We're

1:29

getting slightly off topic already. But

1:31

it does bemuse me how people

1:33

would ask The Irish Times for

1:35

advice about their relationships. But anyway.

1:38

Given what we know about the relationships with people in The Irish Times,

1:40

I think we should move very rapidly along. The

1:44

first question, or more of a point and a question from

1:46

Brian Regan, he says he's

1:48

been listening to our coverage and he'd like to thank the team for the

1:50

great coverage. We're delighted that you're happy

1:52

with it. Myself and

1:54

my friends have been trying to set the

1:57

debate about the nuances of the counting system.

1:59

I thought your team could... help to answer.

2:01

Would a candidate is elected or eliminated and

2:03

their votes distributed among next preferences?

2:05

Are all the candidates' votes used to

2:07

calculate a percentage distribution of those preferences?

2:09

And is this then applied to the

2:11

surplus votes? Or is it a random

2:13

sample taken from the surplus itself and

2:15

the second preferences of those directly applied?

2:17

For example, if a candidate got 120

2:19

votes when the quote is 100, the

2:21

second preference is of a random

2:27

20 votes at the final

2:29

20 which were picked? Or are they the

2:31

second preference votes from all 120 and

2:33

then done pro rata for the surplus? Pat,

2:36

what happens? Well, what

2:39

does one have to say in these

2:41

circumstances? Thank you for your question. There's

2:43

two answers. So when somebody has

2:45

a surplus on the first count, then

2:48

the destination of the surplus

2:50

votes is calculated by reference to

2:54

all the votes. So there's a formula which

2:57

I used to know off my heart, which

3:01

calculates the destination. So if the quote is 1000

3:03

votes, you get 1100 votes, there's

3:06

a surplus of 100, you count those

3:08

1100 votes, you found

3:10

the percentages and you allocate that to

3:12

the 100 surplus. Okay. It gets

3:15

slightly more complicated where

3:18

somebody is elected

3:22

on the later

3:24

counts by the

3:27

transfer of votes from another candidate.

3:29

And if you can visualize it,

3:31

there's a pile of votes. The

3:34

first pile is all

3:36

your first preferences. The

3:39

next pile on top of that is

3:43

the votes that you got

3:45

on the second count from

3:47

somebody surplus. And

3:49

the next pile on top of

3:51

that is the votes

3:54

that you got from the

3:56

elimination of the lowest candidate

3:59

and that puts you over

4:01

the quota and you have a

4:03

surplus, but that surplus is generated

4:05

from actually somebody else's votes. So

4:07

the same mathematical

4:09

operation is used to calculate

4:12

the surplus, where

4:14

the surplus goes from that vote,

4:16

but they are not from your votes, they're

4:18

from somebody else's votes. That

4:21

does have an effect or it can have an

4:23

effect, but that's one of the quirks of the

4:25

system. If the quin is eliminated, it's his transfers

4:27

to you that put you over the limit and

4:29

give you a surplus,

4:31

and it's from the bundle

4:33

from Cormac McQuinn's votes that

4:36

surplus distribution is calculated. It's

4:38

the bundle that puts you

4:40

over the quota. That's where

4:42

the surplus is calculated

4:44

from. And then it emerges that Cormac

4:46

McQuinn has a lifelong abiding hatred of

4:48

some other candidate who you weren't aware

4:50

of at all, but that could have

4:52

an effect upon where those votes actually

4:54

go. Not alone

4:57

is it plausible. It strikes

4:59

me as entirely probable. So

5:01

things like geographical preferences. Geographical,

5:03

yeah, yeah. The

5:05

geographical effect is the one that you most often

5:07

see, and

5:09

that could have an effect across party lines.

5:11

So it's not ideal, but it's a pragmatic

5:13

response to the complications of counting, which as

5:15

we know, could go on for days already

5:17

and would go on even longer. Although my

5:20

understanding is that in Northern Ireland, they do

5:22

a pro rata distribution all the way down.

5:24

Yeah, they may do, I don't

5:27

know. But yes, it's

5:29

a kind of an anomaly in

5:32

the system, but there you are. And

5:34

our second question is from Ian Breslin. He says, I wanted

5:37

to ask the podcast why there doesn't

5:39

seem to be anywhere detailing in one

5:41

location the full details of the individual

5:43

counts and transfers in the local elections.

5:45

Congratulations, Ian, on your nerdiness that you're

5:48

looking for that. Both the Irish Times

5:50

and the RT website says Ian detailed

5:52

out the details of the first count

5:54

for every LEA and then simply updated

5:56

to say when people were elected without

5:58

having the details. of the counts

6:00

transfers, et cetera. And it's not

6:03

available on their websites. So in which case he

6:05

has to go, I think he says, to the

6:07

local authority websites. In contrast, the European election counts,

6:09

which are provided in great detail with all the

6:11

transfers. And that will be true as well. I

6:14

think it's fair to say when there's a general

6:16

election, we will give all the different count details.

6:18

I'm going to answer this one in

6:21

apologies, but it's just really, it's a

6:23

resource issue really. You should

6:25

see the operation that our digital editor,

6:27

Patty Loeg was running here over the

6:29

course of the weekend. We had bodies

6:31

on the ground at all the counts.

6:34

They were manually entering Google Sheets, which

6:36

were then being shared and then being

6:38

sucked into our system so that they

6:40

would generate all the details of the

6:42

first count. To do that over

6:44

six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11 counts, and

6:47

how many LEAs are there in the online? 166

6:51

over the course of this process probably won't

6:53

be completed for another day or so anyway. But

6:57

unfortunately, beyond our

6:59

resource capabilities as it appears to be,

7:01

beyond RTE's one as well.

7:04

Perhaps even though I was

7:06

out in RTE late last night

7:08

after we finished up here

7:12

and the extent of the RTE

7:15

election operation

7:18

always makes me jealous. They have so much

7:21

personnel and resources to throw at it. Also,

7:23

they produced pizza in vastly greater quantities than

7:25

were available to the poor. We ran out

7:27

of pizza. I think it is a sign

7:30

of the... It's one of the pages of

7:32

our coverage. ...that we ran out of pizza

7:34

very, very quickly the other night. There

7:36

were some very sad faces around, including mine. Now,

7:39

we'll move on to the actual matters of the day. Cormac,

7:41

you've been waiting there patiently. What's

7:43

happening with the Dublin count? Can I firstly just

7:45

express my relief that you did not ask me

7:47

about vote transfer thing, even though

7:50

my votes were heavily debated there as

7:53

a candidate standing in the election. I

7:55

couldn't tell you a great deal of

7:57

confidence exactly how that all worked. Thanks

7:59

for taking that bullet. And

8:03

absolutely, absolutely. Yeah,

8:06

the Dublin count, I mean, let's be

8:08

honest, it's going pretty slowly

8:10

here. We're going through the

8:13

various counts. I think we're on, I

8:15

think we just had the fifth count

8:17

a little while ago. Basically

8:20

all of the candidates who got the lower amounts

8:22

of votes are getting eliminated at the moment. You know,

8:24

the state of play is much the

8:26

same as last night. Each of the front

8:28

runners are getting 100-odd votes here and

8:31

there. I haven't progressed much from last night, but Barry

8:34

Andrews topped the poll at 62,000 votes or so. Finnegan's

8:38

Regina Daugherty with about 61,000 votes.

8:42

Then Lynn Boylan had about

8:44

35,000 votes. And

8:46

then there's another bunch just below them

8:49

of Kieron Koff, 32,000 votes. Nyle

8:53

Boylan, the independent

8:55

Ireland candidate, 32,000 votes and

8:57

Aion O'Reard and about 32,000 as well. So

9:01

we're going through the candidates that didn't get very

9:03

much votes. They're getting eliminated. One,

9:05

so watch out for in terms of future eliminations that

9:07

will be coming down the track. Malachi

9:10

Steenson, the independence, the

9:12

immigration skeptic who actually got elected

9:14

to Dublin City Council, he

9:16

got about 7,000 votes in the European election. So,

9:18

you know, they will have to be distributed somewhere

9:20

when he gets knocked out. The

9:23

census that Nyle Boylan, the independent Ireland candidate,

9:25

who expressed hard line, but if not quite

9:30

as hard line views on immigration as

9:32

Steenson, will be a beneficiary of

9:34

a lot of those. But

9:36

the real prizes in terms of

9:38

vote transfers as this thing goes

9:40

on are Dahy Doolan of Sinn

9:42

Féin, Lynn Boylan's running mate. He

9:45

got about 10,000 votes. You

9:48

would expect a lot of them to

9:50

go to her. And then later on,

9:52

Sinead Gibney of the Social Democrats,

9:55

about 16,000 votes that, you know, Aion O'Rearin

9:57

will hope to get some from Kieran Koff

9:59

will hope. to get some from Lynne Boylan

10:01

as well, I'm sure. And

10:04

that's when things will really start to heat

10:06

up and the competition will get quite intense

10:08

for those left-wing votes at that point. Yeah,

10:10

I mean, Pat, let me ask you about

10:12

that. I'm looking at the stage of play

10:14

now and the fifth count. It appears to

10:16

me that Neil Boylan may get enough

10:18

votes to push him ahead of Aion O'Reardon

10:20

at least for a while, because along with

10:22

Malachi Steenson, there's a small number of Irish

10:25

Freedom Party and other right-wing groups there. They

10:27

all amount in total to about 15 or

10:29

16,000 votes. Now, you can't

10:31

be guaranteed that they're all going to go in one direction. In fact,

10:33

one of the things we've heard over the course

10:36

of the last couple of days is that some

10:38

of them are just going in all kinds of

10:40

unpredictable directions, but you would expect him to do

10:42

not too badly out of those. And he's really

10:44

only a few hundred votes behind Aion O'Reardon as

10:46

it stands at the moment. But then, as Cormac

10:48

says, there are the bigger prizes, which are the

10:50

center left and other left-wing groups, and they are

10:53

going to be the decisive ones. So

10:55

what happens, I think, and

10:57

this is going to get really interesting. It

10:59

hasn't quite got there yet, because there's a whole bunch

11:01

of smaller candidates to be eliminated

11:03

yet. But yes,

11:06

maybe does well out of Steenson's votes.

11:09

Maybe does well out of Ashling

11:13

Considine, the AIM2 candidate's votes. He's got

11:15

11,300 votes, and that should push him

11:17

up a bit. And

11:27

just as you could see,

11:29

once Darhi Doolin goes out, he

11:31

should push up. He

11:35

should push up. He's running mate Lynne

11:38

Boylan a bit. She may get some AIM2

11:41

votes as well. Lynne Boylan's in

11:43

pole position for the third season. She's

11:45

in reasonable enough position. So I think

11:47

that two Boylan's actually probably get pushed

11:49

up by the next wave

11:51

of eliminations. But then

11:53

you're going to have

11:55

Boylan, Niall Boylan. is

12:00

going to be surrounded by candidates of the

12:02

left. They will gradually go out.

12:05

And I just think it's hard to see

12:08

him getting the votes from those

12:10

eliminations to push him above other left-wing candidates.

12:12

This is Sinead Gibney, Briege Smith, and possibly

12:14

Claire Daly. Although it isn't beyond the bounds

12:17

of possibility that Claire Daly, if she got

12:19

a very good transfer, particularly from Briege Smith,

12:21

she could kind of stay in the reckoning

12:23

a bit and get ahead. She could, yeah.

12:26

She's on 27 at the moment. That's

12:29

only 4,000 behind Boylan. And

12:35

yeah, she is definitely not out of

12:37

it. But my point is, I think

12:39

a good way before

12:41

he's within shouting distance

12:44

of the quota, Niall Boylan is going to

12:46

be surrounded by left-wing candidates. He'll be be

12:48

calmed at that point, because there will be

12:50

really not a significant amount

12:53

of transfers available, which might raise the very interesting question

12:55

that there's a contest for

12:57

the last two seats between a number of

12:59

parties, which are broadly defined as being on

13:01

the left. And who

13:03

knows where Niall Boylan's transfers

13:05

go to in that situation? Yeah, yeah,

13:08

yeah, for sure. So

13:10

yeah, so look, it's very hard.

13:13

There's very little between some of the

13:15

candidates. There's an awful lot of votes

13:17

yet to be distributed, even before we

13:19

get to that real business end of

13:21

the count, when you have maybe

13:24

five or six candidates far

13:27

to the two remaining seats.

13:29

So I wouldn't bet

13:32

on who will take the last

13:34

two seats yet. I

13:36

might chance some money on Lin Boylan.

13:38

I certainly wouldn't go beyond that. But

13:41

I think I would find it hard

13:44

for Niall Boylan to get elected. And

13:46

so we haven't had a count

13:48

in the other two constituencies. We're expecting one

13:50

in Ireland South before tea time, I suppose.

13:54

Who knows when we'll get a first count

13:56

in Midlands, Northwest. Does this process just take

13:58

too long? Any way to speed it up

14:00

at all? It does take too long. Yes,

14:03

there are ways to speed it up,

14:05

but... Without moving electronic voting.

14:07

It's only a couple of days. It's

14:11

not the greatest problem that we face, is it? Well,

14:13

I suppose we get all these podcasts out of it

14:15

anyway. Every cloud

14:17

is still running. We're here, we're helping them, we're answering

14:19

their queries, helping them with their personal lives. And

14:22

in the Limerick Mayoral election, there does seem

14:24

to be a clear front runner. There's

14:27

a clear front runner in

14:29

John Morn, but it's by no

14:32

means a foregone conclusion, because

14:34

with 15 candidates, one seats,

14:37

the order of eliminations, there's

14:39

a second independent candidate, Helen

14:41

O'Donnell, who will be... Is

14:44

from, I suppose, the

14:46

Fannie Gail camper, the Fannie Gail gene pool. There's

14:49

a strong Fannie Gail candidate, and if

14:52

he goes out, then I think

14:54

Helen O'Donnell will benefit from, disproportionately,

14:58

from his transfers. So

15:01

it's not a done deal. It's not

15:04

a done deal, John Morn, in favour,

15:06

but not a done deal. What remains

15:08

to be seen, it would be really

15:10

important for him, is he getting transfers,

15:12

and particularly is he getting transfers from

15:14

votes from the county, because it's half

15:16

and half city and county, and he

15:18

has been quite city-based, I think. Cormac,

15:20

back to the city of

15:23

Dublin and what's happening in the audience.

15:26

Are the candidates there, or are they knocking around, or

15:28

have they just given up and gone home and waited

15:30

for a phone call? Yeah, I mean, we've had some

15:32

of them, Fina Follas doing a bit of a victory

15:34

lap here, prior to the actual victory. We had Mihal

15:36

Martin earlier, and Mr. President Darrell O'Brien

15:39

was in... It's quite a lap. I was down there

15:41

at 11 o'clock this morning, and he was coming in...

15:43

Well, he is very fit. He must be repeated laps,

15:45

as he must have done about 20 of them at

15:47

this stage. But yeah,

15:50

Barry Andrews is very popular in Fina Follas

15:52

at the minute, and Darrell

15:54

O'Brien was quite pleased with

15:56

himself, as well as the director of

15:58

elections for European elections. He's

16:01

fairly confident they're going to get one in

16:03

each of the European constituencies and they've

16:06

even got a bit of a hope

16:08

or a hunch that they might get Cynthia

16:10

Newmercio over the line in Ireland South as

16:12

well. But to return to Dublin, the other

16:14

candidates here, Aonir Eardon has been around all

16:16

day. I've seen Sinead Gibney and

16:19

in the last short while, Lynne

16:21

Boylan has arrived as well. So

16:25

certainly that camp has been

16:27

the least chatty of the

16:30

various different groupings here. But they

16:32

are nervous, understandably, given what has

16:34

happened which invains votes in the

16:36

selection. Do they expect Cormac to

16:39

conclude this evening? I highly doubt

16:41

it. We've

16:44

had five candidate eliminations so far out of

16:46

23. Now, the

16:48

counts are happening reasonably quickly,

16:51

maybe an hour and a

16:53

half between each count. But

16:56

if it is this evening,

16:58

it will be very

17:00

early hours of tomorrow morning. But

17:02

these eliminations and transfers are of relatively small

17:04

numbers of votes. And as we go up,

17:07

there's bigger numbers to get through. So presumably

17:09

that slows things down as well.

17:12

You mentioned Sinn Féin and their heads down there.

17:14

Cormac, it seems to be

17:16

an obligatory part of all these daily

17:18

podcasts at the moment. There's a lot of

17:20

raking over the ashes of what went wrong

17:22

for Sinn Féin. An interesting piece went up

17:25

at lunchtime from our colleague, the opinion columnist,

17:27

Fintan O'Toole. Fintan has a take on this,

17:29

which is really that Sinn Féin, and

17:31

this is a subject which we've touched on

17:34

before on this podcast. Sinn Féin almost acted

17:36

as a buffer for a long time in

17:38

Irish politics against the rise of the right

17:42

wing populism, which we've seen in nearly every

17:44

other European country. And Fintan describes

17:47

them as a shock absorber of that. And

17:49

I think what he suggests in this piece

17:51

is that those days are now coming to

17:53

an end, and that something that

17:55

you've referred to, which is the very broad

17:58

coalition, which was represented by... Sinn Féin's rise

18:00

in support over the last few years between

18:02

a fairly

18:05

hard-line nationalism on the one hand and

18:07

a social progressivism on the other, that

18:09

that is starting to fracture. Yeah,

18:12

I think Fintan's point is that it

18:14

is cracked completely and that the shock

18:16

absorber, as he describes

18:18

it, is now broken,

18:20

which I suppose means to extend the

18:22

driving metaphor that we're going to feel

18:24

every bump we go over without

18:27

the shock absorber. He's making the point,

18:29

I think, that the far right now

18:32

has a foothold in

18:34

Irish politics. I'm

18:38

not sure if it's a foothold, maybe it's more of

18:40

a toehold. I mean,

18:42

the fact is that there were candidates,

18:47

not insignificant numbers of candidates,

18:49

who have expressed worries about

18:55

the arrival of asylum seekers into localities

18:57

and so forth, have been

18:59

elected. But a relatively small number

19:03

of, you know, ethno-nationalists,

19:06

out-right, far-right candidates, a

19:08

very small number of

19:10

them have been elected.

19:12

And quite a large

19:15

number of candidates

19:17

from immigrant backgrounds have

19:19

been elected. Well, those two

19:22

things are not mutually exclusive. They

19:24

are not, no, they're not, but

19:26

they each go up to making

19:29

up the complex picture of these elections, which

19:31

will take some time to

19:33

figure out. And I do think there

19:35

is a distinction to be made between

19:37

the hard right and

19:40

people who are saying, you

19:42

know, hold on, you know,

19:44

there are questions about citing

19:47

a reception centre for asylum seekers in

19:50

this locality at this point in time.

19:52

Right. Well, I have no doubt that

19:54

that's a subject to which we

19:57

shall return. So, we're not going

19:59

to have a result in Dublin. today, Cormac, we're

20:01

not going to have a result in any of

20:03

the Europeans' path until tomorrow.

20:05

Could this thing drag on till Friday? Oh

20:08

please, gods, no. Could though, could it?

20:10

Cormac, what do you think? As somebody that was in

20:12

Castle Bar for I think four or five days the

20:14

last time in 2019, absolutely,

20:17

it could drag on. And I think those

20:19

poor, unfortunate who were covering the Ireland South

20:21

count on the last occasion had to go

20:23

through an entire recount because because

20:27

Sinn Féin's Leonie Reida was close

20:29

enough to election to warrant it, albeit

20:31

she lost out. And so, I mean,

20:34

there's no knowing how long this could

20:36

go on. It's certainly not going to

20:38

be all over by Wednesday, I would think,

20:40

anyway. So just to be clear, Pat, and finally, we

20:42

were, I think, among the

20:44

first people to vote in these elections in

20:47

Europe, and we will be quite possibly the

20:49

last people to fill seats

20:51

in the European Parliament, which we now

20:53

have a pretty good picture of, the

20:55

predicted swing to the

20:57

right has happened, although perhaps not quite as swingy as some

21:00

people thought it was going to be. Yeah,

21:03

so, you know, obviously big headlines

21:05

of far-right gains in France and

21:08

in Germany, but I suppose the

21:10

crucial thing from the point of

21:12

view of the functioning of the

21:14

next parliament is that it looks

21:16

as if the majority, the kind

21:19

of the centre-centre-right

21:22

majority that we

21:24

had in this year, the outgoing European Parliament,

21:26

is probably again constructable in the next

21:29

European Parliament. And that probably means that

21:31

our Slobanderlung would be the next president

21:33

of the European Commission. Even though some

21:35

members of that coalition,

21:37

including the including Fianna Fáil candidates who

21:39

look likely to be elected, have

21:42

said that they won't be voting for her. Yeah, she might have

21:44

to make it without the Fianna

21:46

Fáil votes, whether it's three or four

21:48

amongst the whatever it is,

21:50

370 that she needs. But

21:54

it is not unusual that

21:57

individual members of parties might

21:59

go. Party whips are

22:01

not quite as strong as the European Parliament.

22:03

Not at all. The other thing about it

22:05

is it's a secret ballot for the Commission

22:08

President. So I mean, they can publicly say

22:10

what they voted, but there's a bit of

22:12

wiggle room there for lots

22:14

of politicians in the European Parliament on that one. We

22:17

should leave it there anyway. We will be back tomorrow.

22:19

We will grimly pursue this thing to the bitter end

22:21

for however long it may take. But

22:24

that is it for today. Our coverage

22:26

of all the results and their implications does continue on

22:28

irishtimes.com over the next few days as well. We'll be

22:30

back tomorrow. We'll be back on Wednesday. We'll be back

22:32

on Thursday. We'll be back as long as it takes.

22:35

Thanks to our producer Declan Conlon and our engineer, J.J.

22:37

Vernon. We'll talk to you tomorrow. This

22:39

podcast is brought to you by

22:41

AJ Products, creating a more friction-free

22:43

office made in Sweden for the

22:45

rest of the world. Visit

22:48

AJProducts.ie to see how we can

22:50

make your workplace work for you.