New Labour leader to be elected on Friday after count by video link

The new leader of the Labour Party will be elected on Friday evening after votes are counted by video link due to the coronavirus crisis.

The party has received postal ballots from about 70 per cent of eligible voters to date. It is understood about 2,200 voters were eligible to take part in the ballot. Those ballots will be sent to Mazars which is continuing to operate as an essential service.

Senior counsel Conor Power is expected to count the votes live with video links to the teams of the two contenders, Alan Kelly and Aodhán Ó Ríordáin. The count will start after midday.

Mr Ó Ríordáin said he believed he had a “strong campaign” and that there was momentum behind his campaign before it was halted by the Covid-19 crisis. He said he believed some supporters of his rival’s campaign have now switched sides and that the contest would be “tight”.

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"We found ourselves in a national emergency and even just ringing people about the Labour leadership felt surreal. That took a few days to get over. We had to improvise in terms of hustings and I ended up doing some Facebook live events instead. There have been question marks around how people can get to the post offices, but the turnout has been quite strong, especially given the circumstances and the lack of publicity it has received," he said.

Canvassing

He said there was very little canvassing happening at the current time and the campaign had all but wound down.

“We ran a strong campaign and fair to say that we were behind [Alan Kelly] when we started out. We know we have made up ground, we absolutely know we have. It is a question of how much ground we have made up. We have had a few people who changed over sides in the last week, who would have told me they were voting the other way even last week. I think it will be tight. We are very positive.”

He said that if he was successful he had categorically stated that he would not lead the Labour Party into a government with Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil, either in coalition or from the outside through a confidence-and-supply type arrangement. He said he believed both parties would "revert to type" on issues of equality or workers' rights.

Meanwhile, the party’s TDs held a video conference on Tuesday to discuss the ongoing Covid-19 public-health crisis, with TDs stating that constituents were reporting delays of up to 15 days in receiving results of coronavirus tests.