Áine Brady, sister of Fianna Fáil chief whip Tom Kitt, topped the poll in Kildare North and was elected on the first count with a quarter of a quota to spare.
After five counts, former minister of state Emmet Stagg of Labour and Cavan native councillor Michael Fitzpatrick of Fianna Fáil took the second and third seats in the constituency, following the distribution of votes for Green Party candidate Shane Fitzgerald and Cristín McCauley of Sinn Féin.
The final seat came down to a contest between Fine Gael veteran Bernard Durkan and Independent TD Catherine Murphy, elected to replace European commissioner Charlie McCreevy in a 2005 byelection.
Murphy, who was 152 votes behind Durkan after the first count, had managed to edge 821 votes ahead of Durkan by the fifth, but it was never going to be enough. The distribution of his Fine Gael colleague Darren Scully's votes in the final count - 69 per cent of his transfers went to Durkan - allowed him to overtake Murphy easily.
The four-seat constituency was until this year a three-seater and the only one in the State without a Fianna Fáil TD since Catherine Murphy's byelection victory in 2005. It now has two Fianna Fáil TDs.
Conventional wisdom before the vote suggested that Fianna Fáil would return only one TD, with Murphy expected to hold on.
Perhaps a notable feature of the commuter-belt constituency, increasingly populated by new arrivals, is that none of its TDs are Kildare natives. Fitzpatrick hails from Cootehill, Co Cavan, and was stationed to Kildare as a garda.
Brady was born in Galway (her father represented Galway East), while Stagg and Durkan are Mayo-men by birth.
Overall change: Independent loss, FF gain
Outgoing TDs
Emmet Stagg Lab
Bernard DurkanFG
Catherine Murphy Ind