After a long day of sorting and organising ballot boxes and papers in County Hall, Dundalk the first official result of the day was finally announced at 11.30 pm last night with Labour’s Michelle Hall elected having comfortably passed the quota of 1281 votes.  

Altogether 6523 votes were cast in the four seat constituency and of those 122 were deemed to be invalid.

The full result of the first count in Drogheda Rural was as follows:

1. Michelle Hall (Labour) 1426 votes
2. Ann-Marie Ford (FG) 1062 votes
3. Declan Power (Ind) 858 votes
4. Eric Donovan SF 721 votes
5. Cunningham Tom (SF) 646 votes
6. Tomás Wilkinson (FF) 428 votes
7. Patrice Johnson (Irish Freedom Party) 343 votes
8. Frank Godfrey (Independent) 325 votes
9. Anthony Murphy (Green Party) 239 votes
10. Mick Martin (Independent) 167 votes
11. Marian Agrios (Fine Gael) 105 votes
12. Derek McAlarney (Independent) 81 votes

Counting will continue throughout Sunday to decide the make up of the ten seat Drogheda Borough District - four in the rural LEA and six in the Urban area.