Longford Westmeath sees Peter Burkes Hat-trick triumph

Peter Burke has made history this General Election. Elected on the 1st count Burke is Longford Westmeath’s poll topper for the General Election 2024. He is the first Fine Gael candidate to top the poll in the constituency since Paddy Cooney over 50 years ago in 1973.

Burke was elected on the first count with a whopping 10,864 first-preference votes.

This dwarfs his total from 2020 which sat at 6,617 first preferences.

The Longford leader got a chance to speak with Peter shortly before the announcement of the first count.

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“I’m feeling relieved, very humbled to get the vote which I did. I was very grateful to my family, very grateful to the support right throughout the constituency.

“I have a huge task to do now to vindicate their faith in me and I work so hard every day to do just that.”

In a video which you can watch on our Longford Leader General Election Live Blog, Burke said, “Getting such a vote and to increase my vote to the extent that I did, I’m very grateful to everyone that voted for me.

“I’m going to keep my constituency clinics going which are so important to me every Monday and Friday.”

He congratulated the other Fine Gael candidate Micheál Carrigy saying, “ It’s great to see Micheál Carrigy get a good reception in Longford as well and that’s been borne out with the vote as well. It’s been a very good day for Fine Gael in Longford Westmeath.”

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Burke has now achieved a hat-trick, this being his third time in a row to be elected to the Dáil.

The first being 2016 then 2020 and now once again in 2024.

“I was very happy with the campaign, everything went very well, and we got a great reception on the doors in Mullingar and North Westmeath,” he recalled.

The outgoing Minister’s campaign did have one bump in the road however as it was at his campaign launch that Michael O’Leary, CEO of Ryanair took the time to share his thoughts on teachers.

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To recap O’Leary said, “The Dáil is full of teachers. Nothing wrong with teachers, I love teachers but I wouldn’t generally employ a lot of teachers to go out and get things done.”

This was water off a duck's back for Peter however as his campaign was not stifled which is clear from the results.

This is probably down to the fact that Burke distanced himself from these comments saying he did not agree with the CEO.

Fine Gael was very successful in his General Election as both Burke and Longford candidate Micheál Carrigy secured seats in Teachta Dáil.

The outgoing Minister for Enterprise explained why Fine Gael did so well in this election.

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“We have three good candidates.

“Micheál has been very strong in terms of working with children with additional needs and pioneering the Autism Committee and coming up with that report which is very much groundbreaking I know we need to legislate that.

“Myself working as the enterprise minister I've been doing my best in terms of resetting the dial for small family businesses so people appreciate hard work and dedication and particularly dedication to public service, you’re accessible, you’re available you’re doing the clinics you’re meeting people week on week off, people will respect that kind of thing.”

Tanya Cannon was not as successful as her fellow party members. She received only 507 first preference votes and only 658 overall, she was eliminated in count 5.

But according to Peter Burke on Saturday Fine Gael was happy with how things were going.

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“We had so many new candidates coming forward, we had about 17 TDs contesting the election and that left about 26 constituencies where there was no sitting TD contesting the election.

“We’re going to have over 20 new members in our parliamentary party, which will give a huge chance for the party to refresh itself as well,” he remarked.

This correlates with Fine Gael's so-called new energy which has been their campaign slogan for the past three weeks.

On the subject of two Fine Gaelers securing seats in the constituency, Burke believed it was a good sign for the party.

“I think it’s good for Longford Westmeath, I think politics has gone very fragmented nowadays and it's a big challenge.

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“And you can see that right across Europe because you have a lot of smaller parties so I hope it does give us a good chance to reset because having 20 new members in the parliamentary party will be a very good asset.

“They all represent their communities and are very much leaders in their own right and that will be a good chance to see that they're only new to Dáil Eireann but, they’re very well got in many of their constituencies.”

With several new parliamentary members, it will be interesting to see how the government formation will go for Fine Gael.

Fine Gael finished up with 38 seats, one behind Sinn Féin and ten behind Fianna Fáil. They took quite the hit in Kildare North as their longest-serving TD and the longest-serving TD in the Dáil lost his seat.

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They are expected to start talks with Fianna Fáil on returning to the Dáil very soon. The talks are expected to take a while.

On the formation of the next Government, Deputy Burke stated, “We’ll know maybe Monday or Tuesday what way the final numbers are going to be and what way in terms of shaping the next government.

“It will be very interesting to see what way the leadership falls between the three main parties.”