‘A positive day for us’ – Social Democrats look set to make gains in Dail

Party leader Holly Cairns, who gave birth to a baby girl on polling day, is well placed to retain her seat in the highly competitive constituency of Cork South-West.

The Social Democrats, founded in 2015, won six seats in the 2020 election with around 3% of first preference votes.

The exit poll after Friday’s General Election put the party on 5.8%, which would give them the most support of the smaller groups in the Dail.

Social Democrats Wicklow candidate Jennifer Whitmore said she was “feeling great” as she arrived at the count centre in Greystones on Saturday.

“It’s been a really positive result so far. Obviously, a little bit to go yet, but it’s looking really good,” she said of tallies that put her on 14% support and in line for the third of four seats in the constituency.

“I think even across the country it’s looking good for the Soc Dems.

“I’m hearing really positive things from all the different count centres, so it looks like our six TDs will hopefully be returned, and then we could be in contention for a number of other seats as well, so it’s a really positive day for us.”

Asked whether the party would be willing to enter government formation talks with Fine Gael and Fianna Fail, Ms Whitmore said: “There’s still a while to go.

“We’re in contention for a number of seats, but we’ll wait until we get them delivered and then we’ll be thinking about talking to the others.”

Asked if she was worried by how support for the Green Party looks to have  dropped after being a junior government partner, Ms Whitmore said small parties “can often bear the brunt of being in government”.

“I think that’s why we were really clear that we set out our five deal-breakers, because we wanted to be very upfront with the public to say ‘if we do go into government, here is what we will be able to achieve’.

“We didn’t want to over-promise, and we didn’t want to give people the impression that we were going to do things that we weren’t going to be able to get.

“So we were really clear and very transparent in saying, ‘these are the five things that we would achieve if we go in’, and hopefully that will stand to us in the negotiations.”

She said that Ms Cairns, who became leader last March, would remain involved in the party over her maternity leave, with deputy leader Cian O’Callaghan stepping in.

Mr O’Callaghan said on Saturday his party’s “red lines” were not intended to rule them out of being in government with Fianna Fail or Fine Gael.

“This is about defining our negotiations and talks with the parties once the election counts are over,” he said.

On a common platform for left-wing parties to negotiate from, Mr O’Callaghan said: “We certainly intend on talking to the Labour Party and other parties over the coming days and weeks, that’s our intention.”

The Social Democrats were co-founded by Roisin Shortall and Catherine Murphy in July 2015 – along with then-independent TD Stephen Donnelly, who later joined Fianna Fail and became health minister.

Asked about the difficulty facing Mr Donnelly to keep his seat in Wicklow, Ms Whitmore said it was always going to be “a dogfight” for the “highly contested” fourth and final seat in the constituency.

“When I was going around on the doors, I was getting a lot of positive feedback from people. People weren’t really talking about other parties or mentioning other candidates.

“So I think it wasn’t clear from that what was going to happen, but I think the fourth seat was always going to be the really messy one.”