Gerard Howlin

Yes, indeed.

So the Social Democrats came out on top in the Dublin Central by-election with their candidate, Daniel Ennis.

Now, this was kind of much anticipated win and a very hyped candidate, I would say.

Extremely.

And I'm actually literally just looking at the transfers even late in the count yesterday again.

And like you're seeing here, so the Sinn Féin candidate, Janice Boylan, got the largest, her largest number of transfers from Gerry Hutch.

And not from other left-wing parties.

And that should tell a story in and of itself.

But the Social Democrats and the Greens were getting transfers from Fianna Gael.

And then the Greens transferred 3,744 votes to the Soc Dems, but only 577 to Sinn Féin.

So that tells the story in of itself, that the Greens performed very well here and their candidate then transferred extremely heavily to Daniel Ennis.

However, he was already at the top at the start of the count.

And I think that's the main issue here for Sinn Féin, that they should have been at the top and Daniel Ennis really should have been catching up with them the whole way and then maybe got over them at the end with the transfers from the other smaller left-wing parties.

But there you go, you know, Sinn Féin are the main opposition party and they're not getting...

transfers heavily from other left-wing parties and they're getting heavy transfers from Gerry Hutch.

Like that's what the story was told here in the Dublin Central by-election.

So it was, I suppose, it was an interesting atmosphere in the RDS yesterday because you had the Social Democrats in the middle of the day.

In their element.

in their element lining up at the doors of the RDS for a type of guard of honour for their leader Holly Kearns and she floated in behind that sunny doorway that we could only just see the sun we weren't experiencing in the shed of the RDS

Then they floated in to much applause and to obviously the cameras flashing and everything, which would have been a kind of a moment Holly Kearns is probably getting more used to.