Sean Defoe

Some of the voters in Salt Hill there speaking to our reporter, Emily Keegan.

I'm joined now on the line by the Minister for Enterprise, Tourism and Employment, Peter Burke, who's been the Director of Elections for Fine Gael candidate, Sean Cain.

Thanks for joining us this morning, Minister.

When you heard it there in the Vox, more people would have voted Sean Cain if he wasn't Fine Gael.

And I suppose one of the other striking things about that box there was people going, you know, left 1-2 and then maybe Fine Gael 3, which would be unusual, I guess, in terms of the transfer patterns, though they may be stranger this time.

He's the biggest name in the field.

Do you think he is going to get there?

Because traditionally, you would have said government party, 15 years in power, very hard to get transfers there.

Yeah, and look, it's definitely difficult, particularly this early in the morning.

There's another stat, since the 1990s, so across those 30 by-elections you've been talking about, the average first preference vote share for the winner has been 29.7%, so almost 30%.

This time, I would find it hard to imagine any candidate is going to breach 20% in Galway, which just means one a long count, but also very hard really to see where this goes.

If not Sean Cain today in Galway, then who else do you think is in with a shake of taking that seat?

Finally, Minister, you spent a lot of time in Galway over the last little while and the fuel protests were particularly huge in Galway about a month ago or so.

It doesn't seem that that anger has sort of stuck through and really affected turnout or necessarily rallied behind someone like Noel Thomas.

Perhaps it was different on the ground and you saw something different to what I saw.

OK, Minister Peter Burke, thanks a million for joining us from Galway there.

You might hear from the Minister as well throughout the day.

Still joined in studio by Conor Lanahan, Louise Burns, Stephen O'Leary.

Louise, you were making a bit of a face there as the Minister was talking about what in particular, what prediction were you disagreeing with?

Potentially a long weekend, alone a long day.