Good morning and welcome to our live coverage of General Election 2024.

We have a busy day ahead with Fine Gael and Labour launching their election manifestos.

Stay with us while we update you on all the twists and turns of the campaign.

If you missed it yesterday, nominations closed and there are 685 candidates in the running for General Election 2024.

Some 246 of the candidates contesting are women, making up 36%.

By far the largest cohort among the candidates is Independents who number 171.

The party with the most candidates is Fianna Fáil with 82 followed by Fine Gael with 80 and Sinn Féin with 71.