Libertas fielded over 600 candidates (including substitutes), but only one was elected: Phillippe de Villiers. Although Ganley himself polled a respectable number of votes, it was not enough for him to take a seat in his constituency. Ganley requested a recount of his personal vote but still lost. Having made the promise to do so before the election, Ganley retired from politics following his defeat on 8 June 2009: the fate of the party he founded, chaired, owned and governed was left to others. However, the affiliated Libertas Institute did emerge again in the Republic of Ireland when the Irish government launched its re-run of the Lisbon Treaty, despite its defeat the previous year. The Libertas party, along with the other minority political groupings, such as the Socialist Party and Sinn Féin, which opposed the European Constitutional Amending Bill, were outspent and outperformed by the political proponents of the bill who won by a substantial majority. Declan Ganley went on to praise the Irish Prime Minister, or Taoiseach, on 'what was, politically, a masterful campaign...from a masterful politician who has made glove puppets out of the opposition' although Ganley also cited recent economic turmoil in the country as a major deciding factor in the vote.