by Keith  Clarke       
The atmosphere was electric at the count station in Cavan on Saturday, right through to the early hours of the next morning in this widely anticipated contest.  People getting quietly impatient and pensive as the result looked like being delayed in the evening. The results came through at 3am. Caoimbhghin Ó Caoláin  topped the poll early on with 11,913, Sean Conlan FG 7,864 ,  Heather Humphreys FG  8,114, Jeo O’Reilly FG 8,333 , Caroline Forde Ind. 1,912 , Liam Hogan Lab. 4,011 , Darcy Lonergan GP 530, Joseph Duffy Ind 129 , Brendan Smith FF 9,702 , Seamus Treanor Ind 1,974 , Kathryn Reilly SF 6,702, Peter McVitty FG 3,858 , John McGuirk Ind. 1,708 ,Margaret Conlon FF 7,864.

What some candidates had to say
Caoimbhghin Ó Caoláin said he would be greatly concerned at Fine Gael he went on to say“ It is most unfortunate that the Fine Gael Party have adopted the blueprint of the outgoing coalition; they have made minor tweaks here and there but at the end of the day we are looking at something very similar indeed; an intention to proceed with the IMF EU deal to continue with many of the policies including the cuts and let no mistake about it, Fine Gael and Labour apposed the various budgets over the past two and three years but at the end of the day due to their commitment and consensus for cuts they’re going to continue with the same approach. You will not cut your way out of recession you’ve got the stimulate activity you’ve got to create growth and governments have got to employ imagination. I see nothing in the Fine Gael programme as proposed that would give me confidence that they have the answers to get us out of this current economic mess.”

Fine Gael TD Séan Conlan explained his party’s  health care policy  that has been mostly addressed as the “Dutch model” by most.   “Health care for everyone regardless of their income - Seán Conlan.
Sean going into more detail said “Everybody will have health insurance” he went on saying “If you’re fit to pay yourself you then pay if you’re on a low income it will be subsidised by the state if you’re on no income it will be paid for by the state so it means the wealthy can’t just walk in the door and everyone else wait in line; everybody regardless of their income will have the same level of cover and be entitled to the same level of care.

Fine Gael TD Heather Humphreys said “Its important that we get credit flowing into businesses and our Indigenous Industries, so through this loan guarantee scheme  I feel there is a great opportunity to  get credit flowing again . It’s not until we get good sentiment into the economy again that people will have confidence to start to spend again and that’s when we’ll be able to create the jobs.”

Independent Seamus Treanor said “In 2002 before the Nice Treaty happened Prionchas Dé Rosse came on Questions and Answers and said that there would be no more than 5000 Eastern Europeans coming to this country but in the mean time they’d changed the rules on it. Countries like Germany with 80million people, then, were able to put a moratorium on it and they didn’t have to take anybody in, France with 60million people; no one was allowed in, Holland with 18million; no one was allowed in and the same with the Belgians with 11million population and no one allowed in.                            
So we through our doors open and we were told there would be no more than 5000 but by the end of 2009 we had 600,000 official figures here in this country our country was bust in 2009 and guess what.. .another 70,000 arrived in its crazy it‘s unsustainable”

Margaret Conlon Fianna Fail said “I am very disappointed today; I’m looking at the tally figures; the first count is not in and if the tally figures are accurate and I believe they are then I’m not going to be elected. I honestly believe that it is not a personal slight on me, I think there is recognition out there for the hard work that I have done for the service that I have given to people locally. I think I’m a victim of circumstance  and I like many of my colleagues throughout the country suffered our fate at the hand of the electorate because of the difficult economic circumstances we find ourselves in, mistakes that were made by the party in the past and difficult but unpopular decisions we had to take over the last three and a half years. “As far as I’m concerned, my seat is on loan.”  My political journey is not at an end and I will be a force to be reckoned with in the future.”

Independent Caroline Forde  The business is for sale and we are continuing to try and keep it as profitable as possible and get on with it. There was an awful lot of roomers flying around in the last few months; one rumour  was that the Cavan and Enniskillen offices were to close another rumour was that the Dublin office was to close so nobody really knew what was going on. So on the 14 January the Cavan Chamber of Commerce called a meeting where we finally got sight of the Quinn proposal; that has guaranteed no more redundancies, has guaranteed an extra one thousand jobs within the next three to four years and to repay 2.8billion family debt to the tax payer which is most important.  We see this is the only proposal we’ve seen that is a winner and we can’t understand why this proposal hasn’t been put forward. It needs to be backed and implemented
As a result of that meeting a lot of politicians were sympathising but no real solutions were coming forward and I spoke out at that meeting and then a lot of employees suggested we should go forward with it and while our percentages might not be very high our campaign only began 16 days ago and in that 16 days we’ve hit the ground running; I’ve never been involved in politics before; we have a strong message I believe in that message I believe the Quinn proposal will have to be implemented to save this area. Quinn has been creating jobs here for the past 35 years and these are real tangible jobs; if these jobs go, they’re not going to be replaced.  The government the IDA, the enterprise boards have not brought jobs down to this area and we have to safe guard the main source of employment in this area.”