The Co Mayo dairy farmer, and former IFA Mayo county chaiman, saw off the challenge of Co Sligo hill sheep farmer Eddie Davitt. Joyce won the seat by a margin of 322 votes to Davitt's 222 votes. Here is a breakdown of the five counties in Connacht voted

Galway: Joyce 100 votes, Davitt 70 votes.

Leitrim: Joyce 14 votes, Davitt 38 votes

Mayo: Joyce 166 votes, Davitt 10 votes

Roscommon: Joyce 32 votes, Davitt 42 votes

Sligo: Joyce 10 votes, Davitt 62 votes

Joyce will now replace Tom Turley as the Connacht regional chair. The tight and tense contest concluded shortly before 9pm when it was annouced Joyce had won.

Speaking to the Irish Farmers Journal immediately after the result, Joyce said he was delighted with the result and said he looked forward to representing the farmers of Connacht.

"Farming is in a difficult place at the moment and there is a long road ahead for the IFA," Joyce said who thanked Davitt and his team for "a good, clean campaign".

Davitt called for a rotating chairman to be put in place to allow the so-called smaller counties of Sligo, Leitrim and Roscommon an opportunity to have regional chairman. The last chairman from outside either Mayo or Galway was Pat Monahan who served from 1988 to 1990.

Joyce joins Bert Stewart (Ulster / north Leinster), James Murphy (south Leinster) and John Coughlan (Munster) as the other regional chairmen in IFA.

Listen to Padraic Joyce and Eddie Davitt in our podcast below:

Delayed contest

The election of a regional chair for Connacht has been delayed following the fiasco involving John O’Beirne. Roscommon farmer O’Beirne had been the only nominated and seconded candidate when the contest opened in January, only for him to be excluded for breaching the rules as he was not a full-time farmer.

The contest was then reopened with all five counties in the province nominating a candidate, but no one candidate received the required second nomination. This resulted in a new system in nominating candidates being deployed to ensure the province has a regional chair.

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