The leader of Sinn Fein said she was ‘sorry’ that her candidates did not perform better.
The Irish premier has branded Sinn Fein’s performance in the council elections as an “unmitigated disaster”, but has refused to call an early general election despite government parties performing better than expected.
Speaking at the RDS count centre in south Dublin, Mr Harris said: “I was very disappointed to hear her comments in relation to, ‘maybe the people on this occasion didn’t really understand this’.“As I travelled around the country, I think the people knew exactly what Sinn Fein were selling, and they just didn’t want to buy it.”
Commentators have noted that Sinn Fein’s strategy in some constituencies had led to its vote being split too much.She added: “It’s not just the number of the candidates, but the fact that in so many cases they were first-time candidates.” Ireland’s deputy premier Micheal Martin said that “the moral of the story” of the Irish elections was that polling should not be taken “as gospel”.
Mr Martin said he would not be making the “error” of drawing conclusions from the local election results about a future general election, saying that it would have a different dynamic and cover different issues. In Dublin, incomplete tallies suggested Fianna Fail’s Barry Andrews and Fine Gael’s Regina Doherty were leading.
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