In a long political career of highs and lows, the return to the Dáil of Fianna Fáil’s Eamon Scanlon (70) in Sligo-Leitrim is yet another comeback.

In the 2020 election, Mr Scanlon lost the seat he regained in 2016, five years after losing his Dáil seat in Fianna Fáil’s 2011 meltdown during the financial crash.

Mr Scanlon has been in politics for more than 30 years, taking his first local authority seat in the early 1990s. He won a Seanad seat in 2002 and was first elected to the Dáil in 2007.

Once a butcher and then an auctioneer, he is from Ballymote, in south Co Sligo.

He resigned the whip in 2009 over moves by the then Fianna Fáil-led government to close breast cancer services in Sligo hospital. He was readmitted to the party in 2011, the year of its worst election.

He then returned to local politics, regaining a Sligo county council seat in 2014.