TAOISEACH AND FIANNA Fáil leader Micheál Martin has said the party has suffered a “poor result” in Dublin Central but that the party has had “historic problems” in the constituency. 

His comments come as party candidate John Stephens won just over 4% of first preference votes. 

Stephens was eliminated after count two with a total of 1,120 votes, just shy of the 1,244 votes needed by the candidates to apply for a reimbursement of their election expenses. 

The Dublin Central constituency was the former home of Bertie Ahern but Fianna Fáil has not won a seat there since Ahern was last elected there in 2007. 

“It is a poor result, no question about that,” Martin said, adding that the party had “difficulties in that particular constituency”.

Speaking at Galway Lawn Tennis Club, Martin said that there is a “weakness” in Dublin Central and the party “have a lot of work to do there”. 

“In terms of Dublin Central, we’ve had historic problems in Dublin Central. We last won a Dáil seat there in 2007 nearly 20 years ago. We’ve only one councillor there, that’s John, and John went forward for the general.”

Seeking to see the positives, Martin said the performance was “on a par” with the 2021 Dublin Bay South byelection, where the party won 4.6% of the vote with candidate Deirdre Conway but retained a seat with Jim O’Callaghan in the general election. 

Speaking to reporters, Martin focused on the Galway West constituency where he says their candidate Cillian Keane “has done particularly well” in coming fourth on the first count. 

“That is for him a very good outcome, and geographically, for us as a party, he performed very strong in the east (of the constituency) in particular. And in his local electoral area he performed particularly well, notwithstanding the fact that he’s only two years a councillor,” Martin said. 

Martin said it was a well-known pattern that byelections do not correlate with general elections, adding that candidates can be shown to perform better in subsequent contests.

He pointed to the cost-of-living crisis arising out of the war in the Middle East as an influence on the result.

Bertie factor

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Fianna Fáil byelection candidate John Stephens. Rollingnews.ie Rollingnews.ie

In Dublin Central, Fianna Fáil minister and director or elections Darragh O’Brien said Stephens ran a “very positive campaign” as a first-time Dáil candidate, adding:

“It’s obviously a difficult constituency for us – it’s one of only three in the country that we didn’t win in the last general election.

O’Brien said he would not “sugarcoat” it and admitted Fianna Fáil was “disappointed” with the result.

Asked in the Dublin Central count centre if Martin’s leadership was in question, Mr O’Brien said it was “absolutely not”.

Asked if he thought former party leader Bertie Ahern’s comments on immigration during the campaign were an influence, Stephens said he did not believe so.

- With reporting by Press Association