Ireland has three constituencies for European elections. II picked figures with an established media profile to represent it in two of them, Dublin and Midlands North-West. Niall Boylan is a veteran shock jock from commercial radio whose record of public commentary includes the suggestion that Jimmy Savile may have been the victim of a posthumous stitch-up. Ciaran Mullooly is a more polished and emollient performer, having worked as a correspondent for RTÉ, the national broadcaster, before his jump into politics. While Boylan stirred up controversy by regurgitating the talking points of climate-change denialism, Mullooly presented himself more in the style of a traditional centre-right politician.
Mullooly squeeze home to take the last seat in Midlands North-West whereas Boylan fell at the final hurdle in Dublin:
the Irish electoral system albania phone data allows voters to rank candidates in order of preference on the ballot paper, so the more second-preference or third-preference votes you attract, the more likely you are to make it over the line. Yet Luke Flanagan, a left-wing independent who topped the poll in Midlands North-West, observed that Mullooly’s campaign team were ‘very comfortable hanging out’ at the count centre with the likes of Hermann Kelly.