The state of Ireland, like Northern Ireland, uses STV in 3-4 seat constituencies, so its seats will not be as proportional to first-preference vote as the spreadsheet seems. Furthermore, in this candidate-centred electoral system, European Parliament results often differ from national polls. Compare the Irish EP and local elections in 2009, or note the Socialist Party EP result. I guess 4 EPP, 4 ALDE, 3 GUE in the south of Ireland. However, there have been no polls, not that they would be worth much.
The Republic will be divided into three constituencies for the EP election:
Dublin (3 seats, unchanged),
Midlands-North-West (4 seats, the existing Border-Midlands-West with the addition of a group of northern counties in Leinster - Louth (predominantly urban, near the border with Northern Ireland), Meath and Kildare (Dublin exurbia, reasonably prosperous), Laois (more peripheral and rural) and Offaly (peripheral, mainly rural and one of the Republic's poorer counties) - but with Clare (western and mainly very peripheral and agricultural) removed to:
South (4 seats, the existing South but with the addition of Clare, Kilkenny, Carlow and Wexford from East (all mainly a mixture of reasonably prosperous agricultural areas with down-at-heel industrial small towns) and also Wicklow (more Dublin exurbia and one of the wealthier counties).
Candidates:
Dublin:
Fine Gael (EPP): Brian Hayes, junior finance minister and Tory wannabe. A full-time party apparatchik since leaving university (with all that that implies) who is capable of being smug and obnoxious at the drop of a hat, but then Dublin Fine Gael voters should be used to that from the retiring Gay Mitchell.
Labour (S&D): Emer Costello, former city councillor who was elevated to the seat upon the retirement of the outgoing MEP. Low profile, married to a junior minister, and has had one sister appointed to a position in the Senate and another appointed as a judge since FG/Labour's ascension to power in 2011, personifying the "snouts in the trough" image that the party has acquired.
Committee for a Workers' International Socialist Party (GUE): Paul Murphy, elevated to the seat in 2011 when the sitting MEP, Joe Higgins, was elected to the Dáil. Nice middle-class university graduate who has kept reasonably high profile since then but internecine squabbling among the far left may well doom him.
Fianna Fáil (ALDE): Mary Fitzpatrick, city councillor whose profile is largely due to having been on the wrong side of factional rows in Bertie Ahern's former constituency of Dublin Central (Ahern made successful efforts to ensure that the party's second seat would go to a non-entity from his own machine rather than to the stronger Fitzpatrick). May benefit from the lack of other credible non-Government candidates and her perceived lack of association with the Ahern era.
Sinn Féin (GUE): Lynn Boylan, complete unknown who, as Lynn Ní Bhaoighealláin, was an unsuccessful local and general election candidate in Kerry in the mid 00s. Originally from Dublin and life partner of Eoin Ó Broin, one of SF's more persuasive spokespersons. Currently head of a cross-border quango dealing with food safety. Likely to be reliant on the party machine bringing out the votes.
International Socialists Socialist Workers' Party t/a People Before Profit (GUE): Bríd Smith, city councillor and permanent activist in the
banlieue of Ballyfermot, has been put forward by the
People's Front of Judea SWP "in an effort to take a second seat" for the various components of what was briefly the United Left Alliance rather than trying to remove it from the
Judean People's Front Socialist Party. Yeah, right. Likely to be a profile-raising run for the next general election where she will attempt to "assist" the sitting
Judean People's Popular Front United Left TD in the Dublin South Central constituency.
Green Party: Éamon Ryan, party leader and cabinet minister during the final Ahern and Cowen governments. Again, almost certainly running in an attempt at raising his profile for the next general election. He might have been better off giving people more time to forget him.
Independent Labour: Nessa Childers, current MEP for East, which constituency is divided in two due to the reduction of seats from 12 to 11. Daughter of a senior Fianna Fáil minister and President from the time when FF were more than a collection of spivs, and granddaughter of the author of
Riddle of the Sands. Formerly a local councillor for the Greens who switched to Labour before the 2009 elections, was elected as an MEP, and subsequently turned out to be too awkward a customer for the party leadership's tastes, raising objections to the elevation of a senior civil servant involved in the bank guarantee fiasco to a post in the European Court of Auditors and publicising threatening phone calls that she received from the then Dublin Labour MEP on the issue. Has been a critic of the party's performance in government from the left and resigned first from the parliamentary party and then from the party itself. Unlikely to be elected but may run the official Labour candidate close.
Reform Alliance: Peter Mathews, a banking and finance consultant who developed a profile as a media commentator during the banking crisis, and was head-hunted by FG and elected as a TD for Dublin South in 2011. Famously fond of the sound of his own voice, he manages the unusual combination of being both socially conservative and on the economic left of his former party (he described himself before 2011 as a "social democrat" and believes in the distribution of wealth to create a more equal society, which is not exactly a priority of the current incarnation of FG). Having annoyed the leadership of the party over the last three years by continuing to say - at great length - the same things that he'd said before becoming a TD rather than just shutting up and doing what he was told, he lost the party whip by voting against the abortion legislation last year, and subsequently resigned from the party. He is currently a member of the semi-detached Reform Alliance, led by the former junior minister Lucinda Creighton, but is unlikely to be happy in the longer term in a group whose intention seems to be to criticise FG from the right. Was briefly mentioned as a possible FF candidate, but is currently pondering an independent run.
Dublin is likely to pan out
Hayes,
Boylan, and probably
Fitzpatrick (thanks to left-wing vote-shredding).
