Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly became the biggest political casualty of the 2024 general election early on Monday morning when he lost his seat in Wicklow in the final count.
After a marathon count at the Wicklow count centre in Greystones, the Fianna Fáil Minister lost to Taoiseach Simon Harris’s running mate Edward Timmins when the last count ended at 5.25am on Monday.
Before the loss of his seat, Mr Donnelly said on Sunday that a combination of a strong “Government vote” for Mr Harris and the loss of a seat from the four-seat constituency had dented his chances.
The Taoiseach won 16,869 first-preference votes, the third-highest vote of any politician in the general election, leaving him with more than 5,000 votes to spare above the quota.
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“We knew Simon would take a huge vote – a Government vote, if you like – in the constituency,” said Mr Donnelly.
“It was strong actually, but when you’re sharing a constituency and a hometown with a Taoiseach and moving from a five-seater to a four-seater; when you put those two things together, it obviously creates a lot of pressure. We all knew it would come down to the final seat, to transfers.”
It is a remarkable reversal in electoral fortunes for Mr Donnelly, who surged to a poll-topping performance in Wicklow as a member of the Social Democrats in 2016, winning more than 14,000 votes, or a 21 per cent vote share.
He helped to establish the Social Democrats in 2015 alongside fellow Independent TDs Róisín Shortall and Catherine Murphy.
In the 2024 election that saw Mr Donnelly lose his seat, his former party increased its vote share nationally, almost doubling the number of TDs in its ranks.
Shortly after the 2016 election, Donnelly left the party after a series of disagreements with the co-leaders.
At the time he favoured going into coalition government with the Fine Gael-led administration, but this was ruled out by other party figures.
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He controversially joined Fianna Fáil in 2017, which led to widespread criticism, though he defended the move at the time, insisting that it was important not to remain on the margins.
Donnelly was appointed as Minister for Health in June 2020 as the country was in the midst of the Covid pandemic. He had previously been Fianna Fáil spokesman on health.
The Covid-19 pandemic dominated much of his first two years in the portfolio with Donnelly overseeing the roll-out of the vaccination programme.
As Minister, Donnelly faced the challenges that all ministers for health had to address: lengthy waiting lists, hospital overcrowding and fights within government over the health budget.
The health budget will have almost doubled in 10 years to about €26 billion by next year.
One of Donnelly’s successes in health has been the implementation of the new public-only contract for hospital consultants which began the process of ending private medicine in public hospitals.
This had been discussed by governments for years but well over 2,500 specialists are now employed on the new public-only contract.
The outgoing government has maintained that waiting times are falling, particularly for outpatient appointments, that numbers on trolleys are also reducing and about 1,200 additional beds have been provided in hospitals.
Some hospitals still struggle to deal with emergency department overcrowding.
Critics say much more needs to be done to boost capacity in the face of a growing and ageing population. They point to controversies such as the death of teenager Aoife Johnson in University Hospital Limerick two years ago and the soaring cost of and delays in the new national children’s hospital.
Donnelly wanted to improve women’s health and his supporters argue he launched the country’s first public IVF service, established a network of same-day gynaecology clinics and that free HRT, excluding professional fees, will be made available next year.
