IF Mrs Geoghegan Quinn had stayed in politics she would have had a difficult fight on her hands to retain her seat at the next general election.
The Galway West TD "inherited" her father's seat 22 years ago but has struggled to win through at almost every poll since then, often just scraping in on the last count.
The coming election promised to be more difficult than usual. An MRBI poll for Raidio na Gaeltachta last November showed her and Bohby Molloy of the Progressive Democrats fighting it out for the last seat.
The poll was good news for her constituency colleague, Frank Fahey, who not only lost his seat at the last election but lost out in a subsequent constituency carve up.
He has been working the constituency hard in recent months, and was rewarded with a level of support which would see him elected in second place, behind Eamon O Cuiv, if the election had been held at that time.
With 16 per cent support (excluding undecided voters), the poll showed Mr Fahey ahead of Labour's Michael D. Higgins (14 per cent) and Fine Gael's Padraic McCormack (14 per cent).
Mrs Geoghegan Quinn had 12 per cent support, down two points from the 1992 election. Then, she barely scraped through, without reaching the quota, on the 10th and final count. Her final tally at the time was just 235 votes ahead of Mr Fahey.
The impact of her decision to leave politics will be to make Mr Molloy's position much more secure. The result of the next election in Galway West is now much easier to predict than it was two days ago.