Thomas Gould: 'Humbling that thousands have elected me'

Thomas Gould insisted he was not emotional, but even as he did, the northside poll topper’s voice broke.

The Sinn Féin TD for Cork Central had just been re-elected on the 10th count, with 2,184 votes from the surplus of his running mate Joe Lynch, eliminated on the previous count, seeing him over the line.

“I tell you now, I’m overjoyed, I feel like I have a frog in my throat,” Mr Gould apologised, as he spoke to a scrum of reporters and supporters at the Nemo Rangers count centre yesterday evening.

“I’m delighted, I’m very proud, the people of Cork North Central voted me in for the second time.

“It’s actually very humbling that thousands of people, more than 10,000 people elected me, so I want to say to everyone in Cork North Central that I will represent them, and I think this is a good day.

“We’ve got the first seat in Cork [for Sinn Féin] for the third election in a row, and it shows that Sinn Féin is strong in Cork North Central and I just want to thank everyone.

“It was a really hard campaign for three weeks of dark nights, cold, wet, we’ve got great Sinn Féin members and supporters and I have an unbelievable family and I wouldn’t be here without the support from my family and friends and the community.”

Mr Gould said that, in the wake of the June local elections, people had written Sinn Féin off, but “one bad election doesn’t deter us”.

Sinn Féin was a political party which had suffered many hard days in its history, he added, but “Sinn Féin will always come again”.

“We want to be an alternative government to Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, we’ve had 100 years and we’re sick of them,” he said.

In the 2020 general election, Mr Gould topped the poll with 13,811 first preferences, being elected on the first count with 3,455 votes to spare.

This time out, Mr Gould’s first preference vote was significantly down, getting 7,399, coming in behind Fianna Fáil’s Pádraig O’Sullivan, who received 7,708 first preferences.

For all of that, he still topped the poll, getting over the 9,846 quota with the help of Mr Lynch’s transfers.

During the election campaign, Mr Gould revealed to The Echo that he had undergone major surgery for a serious illness in October, but, he vowed, he was going to put it behind him and get the best result possible for the people of Cork North Central.