Counting is to resume in the European Parliament elections later which is now into its fourth day.
Fianna Fáil Senator Niall Blaney has been eliminated after the fifteenth count in the Midlands North-West constituency.
Luke 'Ming' Flanagan still leads the way and is now 10,000 votes off the quota.
Nina Carberry, Maria Walsh and Barry Cowen also look certain to be elected along with him.
Ciaran Mullooly of Independent Ireland has moved even further ahead and is in pole position to win the final seat.
He is now almost 18,000 votes clear of Sinn Féin's Michelle Gildernew, who will need significant transfers from her party colleague Chris McManus when he is eliminated later today.
Counting gets underway again at 9am this morning with the final count expected tonight.
Ireland South and Dublin
In Ireland South Billy Kelleher continues to close in on the quota.
Sinn Féin's Kathleen Funchion also moved into contention after picking up almost 16,000 votes from the elimination of her party colleague Paul Gavan.
All four Dublin seats were filled by Tuesday night.
The MEPs who will represent Dublin in the European Parliament are Fine Gael's Regina Doherty, Fianna Fáil's Barry Andrews, Lynn Boylan of Sinn Féin and Labour's Aodhán Ó Ríordáin.
Local elections
Independent Tom McDonnell was the 949th councillor to win a seat as the local election counts finished on Wednesday night.
He is a founder member of Éire Saor, a group targeting homelessness in Newbridge, Co Kildare.
With all the local seats filled Fianna Fáil has come out marginally ahead with 248 seats with Fine Gael on 245.
Independents and Others took 219 seats while Sinn Féin have 102 seats across the country.
Labour is on 56 seats with the Social Democrats at 35 - the Green Party has 33 seats.
Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald has said it's "obvious" that the party ran "too many candidates" in the local elections.
“We ran a great, talented slate of people and wanted to give everyone the opportunity to vote for Sinn Féin across all the local election areas,” she said.
“Our candidates were fantastic and worked really, really hard.
“I am really disappointed that we didn’t get more of them over the line," she added.
Taoiseach Simon Harris has suggested that voters knew what Sinn Féin 'was selling' in the local elections but didn't buy it.
