Clonakilty election counting set for Saturday evening start

COUNTING of votes at Clonakilty Community Hall in the upcoming elections will begin at 4pm on Saturday June 8th.

The returning officer for the local elections in Cork, Maurice Manning, confirmed that all of the county boxes – which will contain both European and local papers – will be opened and sorted in Mallow on Saturday, June 8th.

Initially, Mr Manning said they didn’t think that the papers would be available early enough on Saturday evening to start the count in the different electoral areas.

‘We had taken a decision to commence these counts on Sunday morning, but now that the referendum is not taking place, it will shorten the length of time taken to open the boxes and separate the papers,’ he said.

The count for the Bantry-West Cork, Bandon-Kinsale, and Skibbereen-West Cork local electoral areas is expected to be adjourned on Saturday evening and resume at 9am on Sunday morning.

County Hall will host the counting for elections for the Macroom and Carrigaline electoral areas.

In the event of a recount in the West Cork local electoral areas, Mr Manning said it will be conducted at County Hall on Monday. Over the course of the last four local elections, Mr Manning said there was one recount in 2004, and another in 2019.

‘We brought the 2019 recount (which involved the famous one vote difference between Holly Cairns and Finbarr Harrington) to County Hall because it was more manageable, from our point of view. It had nothing to do with availability of the hall.’

The returning officer said the hall in Clonakilty is not needed for Leaving Cert exams as the adjacent school has its own facilities for that.

Fine Gael’s director of elections for West Cork John Collins said they will adapt to the new system. ‘The count wouldn’t normally start in Clonakilty until the afternoon anyway – until after the papers were sorted out,,’ he said.

However, he said the important part of his job is to see the boxes from the different electoral areas being opened and sorted because it gives them an indication of their party and candidate geographical strengths and weaknesses.

‘Tallies are important for us because our strategy going into the next election will be based on them,’ he added.

‘Fine Gael has always had a fairly rigid election strategy where we divide our canvassing areas amongst our candidates to maximise their impact,’ he said.

The count centre for European elections for Ireland South is Nemo Rangers club.