Daniel Murray

Michael O'Leary, possibly, you know, he's giving out about the airport, but maybe the place to start for him would be looking at banning booze on his own flights.

So let's start with Galway West, I suppose, where there was a poll out last week and actually Shane Ross in the Sunday Times sums it up very well that all three of the large parties were shocked.

Fianna Fáil were shocked because they weren't at the races.

Sinn Féin were shocked because they might lose their deposit and Fine Gael are shocked because they might well win.

It was 4% margin of error, so quite large.

And also by elections really can be decided on transfers as well.

So it's only really a kind of a flash in the pan.

it did put Sean Kine, the Fine Gael candidate, as the top in terms of first preference votes, which, if you remember back only a week ago, the received wisdom was that Fine Gael were in big trouble in Galway West, not least of all because of Leo Varadkar's comments over farmers.

So I think the party are particularly happy with that, although it doesn't necessarily spell out the likely outcome.

Second up in that poll was Noel Thomas, Independent Ireland.

Now,

the received wisdom was that he was one of the top players and that has proven to be the case, at least with this particular poll.

And he was very prominent during the fuel protests, obviously.

And it's interesting when you look at the likes of Noel Thomas and then the next player after that, Helen Ogbu of the Labour Party,

You can see how the large parties, Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil and even Sinn Féin as the large opposition party are being squeezed from both sides, from the left and from the right.

So I think still all to play for in that constituency.

Transfers will be a big part of deciding it.

Both Noel Thomas and Sean Cain may not end up being transfer friendly.

There's a left voting pact in place.

So the left wing candidates could end up transferring to each other in the later in the later round.