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File image of Michael McDowell Leah Farrell
NUI
Michael McDowell first candidate elected to new Seanad
The Independent Senator was re-elected to the National University of Ireland panel late last night.
LAST UPDATE | 30 Jan 2025
MICHAEL MCDOWELL HAS become the first candidate to be elected to new Seanad.
The Independent Senator was re-elected to the National University of Ireland (NUI) panel on the first count just before midnight.
McDowell was a founding member of the now defunct Progressive Democrats and was first elected as a TD in 1987.
He lost his seat in 1997 but regained it in 2002 and was appointed Minister for Justice.
He also became Tánaiste in 2006 and became leader of the Progressive Democrats in the same year.
But a year later, he became the first sitting Tánaiste to lose his seat and following this, he stepped down as leader of the Progressive Democrats.
In 2016, McDowell was elected to the Seanad on the NUI panel and was re-elected in 2020 and again last night.
Out of a valid poll of 36,114, the NUI panel had a quota of 9,029 – McDowell received 11,390 first preference votes.
I am very grateful to have been re-elected to Seanad Éireann tonight on the first count with 11390 first preferences. Thank you to @NUIMerrionSq voters for returning me to the 27th Seanad. My surplus of 2361 votes will be distributed from 10am tomorrow. pic.twitter.com/wit4VC5YQt
— Michael McDowell (@SenatorMcDowell) January 30, 2025
His surplus of some 2,361 votes will be distributed from 10am.
At the Trinity College count, no candidate reached the quota after the first count and the lowest ranked candidate, Abbas Ali O’Shea, was eliminated and his votes will be redistributed.
Counting there will resume at 9am.
Counting in the Seanad elections got underway yesterday at Trinity College and at the RDS in Dublin following a lengthy campaign.
Senators and would-be senators had been canvassing TDs, councillors and graduates from the NUI and Trinity College of Dublin since early December to earn one of the 49 seats up for grabs.
Senators are elected by graduates of some universities to two out of the seven panels in the Seanad, and there are three seats each for Trinity and for NUI.
However, this is the last time that Trinity and NUI will elect three Senators to the upper house of the Oireachtas.
From 2026, Trinity and NUI graduates, along with graduates of other higher education institutions who hold Irish citizenship, will elect six Senators to the Seanad’s Higher Education constituency.
The other five panels are designed to give political representation to different groups and sectors within Irish society.
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