TWO INDEPENDENT CANDIDATES who left Sinn Féin since being elected as TDs in 2020 have seen their support evaporate in this general election.

Patricia Ryan in Kildare South and Violet-Anne Wynne in Clare have both only managed to garner votes in the hundreds. 

As it stands, with transfers still being counted, Ryan has 753 votes on the fourth count while Wynne has just 316 on the third count. 

In 2020, Ryan received 12,152 votes and Wynne won 11,903. 

Both politicians unexpectedly won Dáil seats in 2020, when Sinn Féin outperformed expectations and both women turned independent after rows with the party leadership. 

Ryan, who left the party earlier in October after 15 years of membership, said Sinn Féin asked her to take down a Facebook post in which she said she’d written to the defence minister Micheál Martin about an encampment on the Curragh.

She also claimed that party members sought to “vet” questions she was going to ask leader Mary Lou McDonald at a meeting.

Sinn Féin’s chief whip Pádraig MacLochlainn said he was “disappointed” at her decision to leave. She had parted company with the party in advance of what was set to be a contested convention for her constituency. 

Ryan was previously a member of Kildare County Council between 2019 and 2020. Before entering politics, she was a trade union shop steward.

Wynne quit Sinn Féin in 2022, claiming she has been subjected to “psychological warfare”.

She said her continued membership of the party had become “untenable” and alleged that her pregnancy at the time had been used as a “further stick to beat me with”.

Sinn Féin deputy whip Denise Mitchell TD said at the time that Wynne had been “a valued member of the Sinn Féin Oireachtas team” and that the party had worked hard to resolve challenges at constituency level. 

Wynne is a former member of the Reserve Defence Forces and worked as a home help provider for young adults with disabilities, a literacy tutor, and for the crime victims helpline.