Eamon Scanlon is back in the Dáil after losing his seat in the 2011 general election. Before he was a politician, he was a butcher and later an auctioneer. The 62-year-old businessman from Ballymote, Co Sligo, has been a long-time figure in Fianna Fáil and was first elected to the Seanad in 2002 and then to the Dáil in 2007. In 2009, he resigned the whip over the then Fianna Fáil government's decision to close breast cancer services in Sligo Hospital but he was readmitted to the party in 2011. He was elected to Sligo County Council for the Ballymote-Tubbercurry area at the 2014 local elections.