Sorca Clarke, who lost her Westmeath County Council seat last year when she received slightly more than 500 votes, topped the poll in the Longford-Westmeath constituency in a midlands manifestation of the Sinn Féin surge.

The 41-year-old mother of four is from Artane, Dublin, but moved to Mullingar with her husband, Darran Caulfield, during the boom in order to improve their quality of life. The qualified accountant helps her husband run a security business while also taking care of one of their children, who has special needs.

She has been a member of Sinn Féin for 16 years. The party had three councillors elected in Westmeath in the 2014 local elections but two of them had resigned from the party by the time of the poll last year, which saw Clarke lose her seat.