The counting of votes in the local and by-elections gets underway this morning.

Counting of the European ballots will take place tomorrow.

Early estimates suggest more than half of those eligible to vote in these elections did so.

That means that when ballot boxes are opened in count centres this morning at 9am - more than 3 million papers will have to be sorted.

The European votes will be separated out and put back in boxes and transferred to a single count centre in each of the three constituencies for counting tomorrow.

Counting will then get underway of the local election ballots, with tallies coming through later this morning, and first results in the afternoon.

Counting of votes in the two by-elections in Dublin West and Longford Westmeath will also take place today.

By tonight, while not complete, we will have an idea how bad the kicking of the Labour party has been, will Fine Gael get some of the blame, is there some forgiveness of FIanna Fáil from the electorate, how many have turned to Sinn Féin and was yesterday really independents day.