Kerry South returned two of its three sitting TDs with Minister for Arts, Sport and Tourism John O'Donoghue topping the poll but having to wait until the third count to be elected.
An all-out effort to divide the constituency narrowly failed to produce a second seat for Fianna Fáil and resulted in O'Donoghue gaining a smaller first-preference vote than he might have otherwise expected.
Outgoing Labour TD Breeda Moynihan-Cronin lost the seat she had held since 1992 on the retirement from politics of her late father Michael Moynihan.
The threat to her seat was apparent from early morning with tallies indicating Fine Gael's Tom Sheahan, a Killarney area councillor based in the extreme east of the constituency, was out-polling her. Cronin has traditionally been ahead of the Fine Gael candidates whose large transfers have then helped to elect her.
On this occasion, it was the other way around as Sheahan benefited from more than 3,000 transfers from Moynihan-Cronin on the fifth count, to regain the seat last held by Fine Gael in 1989 by the Dingle-based Michael Begley.
The 76-year-old Independent Jackie Healy-Rae managed to cling on to his seat for a third Dáil term after finding himself 747 first-preference votes behind the second Fianna Fáil candidate, Cllr Tom Fleming, in a repetition of the 2002 general election.
Healy-Rae, a former director of elections for Fianna Fáil in the constituency, was elected without reaching the quota.
A total recount and recheck of the 39,325 ballot papers failed to produce any significant error or difference to the earlier outcome and, shortly before 1 am on Saturday, returning officer Padraig Burke formally declared the result.
Overall change: Labour loss, FG gain
Outgoing TDs
John O'Donoghue FF
Breeda MoynihanCronin Lab
Jackie Healy-Rae Ind