A Kildare county councillor who was a candidate in the recent Seanad election has brought a High Court petition challenging the conduct of vote counting for the agricultural panel.
Angela Feeney, a member of the Labour Party’s central council and former head of Technological University Dublin’s school of languages, law and social sciences, wants the results overturned and a recount ordered.
She claims there should have been a full recount, rather than simply a repeat of the 23rd count, after which she was eliminated.
On Friday, Mr Justice Mícheál P O’Higgins granted her permission to bring her petition.
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The judge was satisfied her case met the threshold for “leave”.
He said the proceedings could be served on the clerk of the Seanad, who was also the returning officer. The Minister for Local Government, the Attorney General and other candidates can also be served, he said.
Cllr Feeney said she and her agents were not allowed to be present at the rerun of the 23rd count.
In an affidavit, she said the difference between her and the next candidate, Fine Gael’s Maria Byrne, was a margin of .116, or one-ninth, of a ballot.
This can be calculated because each valid Seanad ballot paper is deemed to have a value of 1,000 votes. The total valid poll for the agricultural panel was 95,667 votes.
While candidates and agents are entitled to be present at the counting of the first preference votes, all subsequent counts were carried out “at such a remove from those present that they could not see the votes being counted”, she said.
She requested a full recount but the returning officer declined this.
She claims a minor human error could have had a significant impact on the sequence of events or the outcome in the 11-member agricultural panel election.
If any preference in her favour on a ballot paper was not correctly attributed to her, or if any preference was wrongly attributed to Maria Byrne, she likely would have been elected and instead of Ms Byrne, she said.
The failure to carry out a full recount amounted to evidence, on its face, of a “mistake or other irregularity which is likely to have affected the result of the election” within the meaning of the Electoral Acts, she claims.
That later counts were “effectively conducted in private” may have been to protect the identity of the voter, as it appears number on the back of the ballot paper must, under the rules, be protected from view, she said.
However, these attempts to avoid voter identification led to an oversight breach, she said.
She believes the counting of the votes in this manner was wholly unsatisfactory and not in accordance with the 1947 Electoral Act.
Her senior counsel, Conor Power, with Hugh McDowell, told the court Dáil elections carry the entitlement to a full recount as a result of a change in the law.
The application was brought “ex parte”, meaning only Cllr Feeney’s side was represented.
Séamus Clarke SC told the court he and Cian Kelly BL were present on a “watching brief” on behalf of the general secretary of the Fine Gael Party.
The case returns later this month.
