Peter Fitzpatrick, a former manager of the Louth Gaelic football team, is the first Independent to be elected a TD from the county since the 1930s.
The 57-year-old former soldier and sportsman was first elected a Fine Gael TD for Louth in 2011 and again in 2016 but he resigned from the party over the position taken by Fine Gael on the 2018 referendum on the repeal of the constitution ban on abortion given his opposition to abortion.
He also complained about his time as a Fine Gael backbencher saying that he felt “like I was just there to push a button”.
In October 2018 he announced that he would stand as an Independent candidate.
He said initially that he would vote with the minority Fine Gael-led government on votes on the budget if they “look after the middle class” but he later voted against the government on key votes such as a no confidence motion in Fine Gael’s minister for housing Eoghan Murphy in December 2019.
Fitzpatrick took the fifth and final seat in the five-seater Louth constituency with 10,779 votes, 1,647 more than he received in 2016 as a Fine Gael TD.
