In a surprise turn at the very last count of the NUI Seanad elections, Senator Joe O'Toole fell from second place to take the third and last seat. He and the other outgoing senators were re-elected.
For 12 counts Senator O'Toole, former general secretary of the ICTU and INTO leader, had come in second. But a last-minute turnaround in the 13th meant that his union rival, former ASTI president Ms Bernadine O'Sullivan, was directly behind him in fourth place.
There had been predictions of a battle between the two, whose policies directly oppose each other, but Senator Feargal Quinn and Senator O'Toole polled within a couple of hundred votes of each other, followed by Labour's Senator Brendan Ryan, all outgoing senators.
At that stage, Ms O'Sullivan came closer to threatening Mr Ryan for his third seat than coming anywhere near Mr O'Toole. Her first-preference total was behind Mr Ryan's by only 200 votes, but in the end he gained on transfers.
On the 13th count, Mr Ryan gained transfers from Ms Valerie Bresnihan, the chairwoman of the Penal Reform Trust, to sail past Mr O'Toole to reach the quota and take the second seat.
Mr Quinn led all the way and was elected on the 12th count. On the last count Mr O'Toole had 7,719, with Ms O'Sullivan 1,682 votes behind him.
Mr O'Toole put his loss to third place down to the pattern of the transfers away from teachers. "I can see from the transfers that there is a scepticism about teachers. I want to restore the good name of teachers. This a a very worrying trend here," he said.
Ms O'Sullivan made no secret of her delight. "I am absolutely thrilled at my vote and I'm thrilled that I'm right behind O'Toole. I'm looking forward to the next election," she said.
However, it had been the closeness of the vote between Ms O'Sullivan and Mr Ryan that was the main point of interest. As the transfers came in, Mr Ryan's lead widened but it was the ninth count which was pivotal to him.
The transfers of Mr Pierce Purcell, retired secondary school teacher and ASTI member, were distributed, leading to speculation as to where the teacher's transfers would go. In the end Mr Ryan gained 340 transfers, Mr O'Toole 263, and Ms O'Sullivan 234.
Others who polled well were Ms Bresnihan, who maintained fifth place, and Mr Brendan Price, of the Irish Seal Sanctuary, who came sixth out of the 16 candidates.