As counting continues in the presidential election, Michael D. Higgins has 56% of the first preference votes, which guarantees his return to the Phoenix Park with a massive majority.
The collapse of Sean Gallagher and Gavin Duffy's predicted support coupled with the low turnout of 45% has seen Peter Casey claim a shock 20%-plus of the vote after hovering between 1%-2% in the various opinion polls.
It was a disappointing night for both the other independent, Joan Freeman, and Sinn Fein's Liadh Ni Riada who failed to extend beyond their respective bases with single digit votes of 6% and 8%. Even if all of the other candidates' votes are combined, they fall way short of Michael D.'s mandate to spend another seven years in Aras an Uachtarain.
Exit polls also suggest 71% of voters to be in favour of removing blasphemy from the constitution, which is bad news for such prominent No campaigners as John Waters, Kathy Sinnott and Ronan Mullen.

Congratulating Michael D. on his re-election, the Travellers' organisation, Pavee Point, released this statement: "There is no doubt that there was a protest vote in this election that played to the advantage of one candidate and that not all of this protest vote should be equated to being motivated by prejudice against Travellers.

"However, it is important that we also do not gloss over the fact that one candidate sought to exploit prejudice against a small and marginalised community – the Traveller community in Ireland - for his own political ends and the warning that this sends out to the political system in Ireland.

"There is a complacency within the public discourse in Ireland that somehow we are immune to the nasty populism evident in other European countries and beyond and that we do not have a problem with racism in Ireland. Media often struggle to deal with this populism and this was sometimes evident in the recent campaign in Ireland when it apparently livened up a dull campaign.

"Pavee Point notes that there has been no clear anti-racism strategy in Ireland since the National Action Plan Against Racism ‘Planning for Diversity’ was completed in 2008 and was never renewed."