Running in her first election, Portarlington Independent Elaine Mullally was eliminated after the Sixth Count.
She achieved 2,970 first preference votes and came sixth of the 12 candidates who entered the contest.
Speaking from the count centre on Saturday, Mullally was happy with the campaign that she ran.
Laois has never elected a woman or an Independent and she spoke about the difficulties associated with being an Independent candidate.
She said: “The party structure is just a machine on its own. It’s hard coming up against that as an independent.
“They have everything going in their favour. The money, the whole lot.”
Mullally also spoke in glowing terms about her team of people who assisted her along the way.
She said: “There’s not one single regret that I have. We all agreed at the start of this that we were going to enjoy every minute of it, have a good laugh throughout it. You know we hit the ground running, we had meetings early on.
“From those meetings, that’s where we got most of my campaign team came from. So, once the campaign team were together then, it was just purely a case of hitting the ground running, knocking on doors, talking to people. We’ve had some really good craic.
“To get out and meet people, and to shake hands with them, to understand where they’re coming from and what their issues are.
“It was huge, you know, and I won’t ever underestimate it, and I never will underestimate the work that somebody puts themselves forward for, ever has again.
“But I have the most incredible team. Like, there is no doubt about it. And I will stand up to any other candidate here and say that I had the best team on the ground.”
And what does the future hold?
She said: “Well, we’ll all take a well-deserved break first.
“Christmas is coming, and that’s going to be a good distraction for me. I love Christmas.”
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