Key times for the vote and count
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 8
POLLING opens at 7am on Saturday morning, and polling stations will remain open until 10pm. Once polling closes, ballot boxes will be sealed and transported by Gardaí to the Kerry count centre in Killarney, where they will be secured and kept under guard overnight.
In all, there will be 136 polling stations – the vast majority in national schools – around the county catering for 260 individual ballot boxes. Six boxes of postal votes will also be transferred to Killarney. Details of all polling stations are available by visiting the County Registrar’s Office website at www.kerryro.ie.
SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 9
AT 9am on Sunday, count day will commence at the Killarney Sports and Leisure Centre at the MD O’Shea Roundabout, By-Pass Road, Killarney.
The count – which be supervised by County Registrar and Kerry Returning Officer Padraig Burke – will begin with the sorting of votes from all 266 ballot boxes.
A combined tally – compiled by the various main parties who will be working in conjunction with each other – will commence as soon as the first ballot boxes are opened for sorhing.
The result of the full tally can be expected by mid afternoon on Saturday.
Once ballot sorting is complete, a process that will take several hours, the first official count will get underway.
The time-frame for this is extremely difficult to predict but, based on the 2016 Election, the result of Count One, and possibly the destination of the first seat, is likely to be known by late on Sunday night.
MONDAY, FEBRUARY 10
If necessary, and this is virtually guaranteed, the count will resume in Killarney from 9am.
Based on similar five-seat counts in the past, a final result could be reached by Monday night.
However given the tight nature of the contest in Kerry, with the distinct possibility of recounts being called, the count may continue into Tuesday.
FULL DETAILS OF ALL TALLIES, COUNTS AND RESULTS – ALONG WITH COLOURFUL NEWS, INTERVIEWS AND IMAGES FROM THE COUNT – WILL BE CONTINUALLY UP DATED THROUGHOUT THE COUNT ON THE KERRYMAN’S TWITTER AND FACEBOOK PAGES.