DUBLIN – Ireland’s two main coalition parties, Fine Gael and Fianna Fail, each secured four of the 14 seats contested for the European Parliament after marathon election counts concluded on Friday. The main opposition, Sinn Fein, trailed with two seats.
Although this marked a one-seat gain for Sinn Fein compared to the last election in 2019, the party had aimed for a stronger performance in both the European and local council elections held simultaneously. Instead, they garnered roughly half the vote share of each of their main rivals.
The left-wing party, which had polled as high as 35% in October, saw its commanding three-year opinion poll lead vanish ahead of last Friday’s elections. Voters shifted their focus to immigration over affordable housing, an issue Sinn Fein had previously dominated. In the local council elections, Sinn Fein received 12% of the first preference votes and 11% in the European polls, which took almost six days to count under Ireland’s proportional representation electoral system.
Prime Minister Simon Harris’s centre-right Fine Gael, part of the largest political group in the European Parliament, the European People’s Party (EPP), won four seats, down one from 2019. Fianna Fail, a member of the liberal Renew Europe group, gained two seats. Independent candidates, a diverse and influential political force in Ireland, claimed most of the remaining seats, and also made gains in the local elections.
While no right-wing candidates from Ireland won seats in Brussels, defying a broader trend across the bloc, a notable anti-immigration candidate performed relatively well in the Irish south constituency. Additionally, far-right candidates won a few of the 949 council seats, an increase from five years ago.