Cónal Thomas

But indeed their showing here has surprised

commentators and it has surprised I think some of the party even though they would like to say that they had great confidence all along and indeed you know Janet talking about the fact that the candidate Janet Horner was here this afternoon talking about how she didn't want to get pulled into I suppose controversial divisive

or negative remarks around another candidate in this constituency which has drawn much attention, Gerard the Monk Hutch and I'm sure everybody is wondering how is he doing?

He was the big story out of the 2024 general election when he ran in this constituency and he almost clinched a seat.

Now in a general election there's four seats up for grabs so it is actually quite, it's much easier to get a seat in a general election than it is in a by-election

But he ran again this time still as an independent candidate.

Didn't really change his approach all that much.

Maybe there was a little bit more social media campaigning and certainly he was slightly more open to the media, but still overall not a kind of

traditional candidate by any means.

He hasn't been in the count centre here at all this afternoon, unless he's snuck in and out without us seeing him.

And of course there'd be a lot of media interest.

But essentially where he's at at the moment, he's not even performing as well as he did in the general election.

So maybe the novelty of his candidacy wore off.

He talked a lot about capitalizing on a spoiled vote cohort of people, which doesn't seem to have materialized.

People might remember back in the presidential election, there was a swathe of spoiled votes across a lot of constituencies.

Dublin Central, of course, was one of them.

There were thousands of spoilt votes.

That may have been for other reasons, people upset with how the presidential election campaign was run and the lack of candidates.

He said in an interview with the Irish Independent he talked about how he wanted to capitalise on what he saw as a dissatisfaction in those spoiled votes, but it doesn't seem to have materialised.

interesting thing here, Conal, is that the other, I suppose, right-wing candidate, Malachy Steenson, who is a sitting Dublin city councillor and is known for his anti-immigration views, to give you, I suppose, one part of what he sets out as his stall.