Cork goes to the polls: Micheál and Mary Martin cast their votes

By teatime today, turnout in the presidential election was slow across Co Cork, averaging about 26.6%.

At the last presidential election, in 2018, turnout nationally was 43.9%, the lowest of any presidential election.

There was, however, a steady stream of voters at St Anthony’s Boys’ National School in Ballinlough when Taoiseach Micheál Martin and his wife Mary arrived to vote this morning.

Mr Martin arrived an hour later than the Fianna Fáil press office had advertised but, to be fair, he had just flown in from Brussels to exercise his franchise, coming from a meeting of EU leaders.

Micheál and Mary Martin chatted with locals at the polling station, and nobody mentioned that, although Fianna Fáil candidate Jim Gavin was still on the ballot, he had spectacularly withdrawn from the race three weeks ago.

Similarly, nobody asked the Taoiseach who he was voting for, as he had already said two weeks ago that he intended to give Fine Gael’s Heather Humphreys the number one.

Still, if Mr Martin was down over his party’s lack of a viable candidate, or that his Coalition partner’s candidate was trailing behind Independent Galway West TD Catherine Connolly in opinion polls, he wasn’t showing it.

Before he and Mary Martin cast their votes, he made a good-natured point of exaggeratedly checking behind him.

He explained afterwards that he remembered posing with several other Fianna Fáil TDs for a photo at a similar classroom polling station during the 1990 presidential election, in the teeth of the storm of controversy surrounding the party’s then candidate, the late Brian Lenihan Sr.

It was around the same time of year as this election, he recalled, and the politicians all gamely smiled for the camera, jostling for position, “some would take your ankles off”, but none of them noticed they were standing in front of a banner reading ‘Trick or Treat’.

“And that’s why I always check behind me now,” Mr Martin said ruefully.

Good advice at any time.