THIS was it; the last bastion of the No vote, the final outpost of those seeking to bury Lisbon and standing in the middle of the storm was Tánaiste Mary Coughlan.

As the rest of Ireland's Yes campaign breathed a sigh of relief yesterday, there was one small corner of the island still determined to fight.

Donegal North East re­turned Ireland's first No vote by 51.4% to 48.6%, just 171 votes. A few miles south, Coughlan was on shaky ground in her own constituency of Donegal South West, with a second No vote coming in by the narrowest of margins – 50.3% to 49.7%.

The Tánaiste is now facing her latest – and certainly most embarrassing ? political crisis and she will surely come in for criticism that she couldn't carry her own constituency when the rest of the country was saying an overwhelming Yes to Lisbon.

Coughlan tried to put a brave face on the defeat yesterday, saying she did not believe the result reflected badly on her and she had done everything she could.

The resounding cry from the county was for attention – this may not have been so much about Europe as about Ireland.

"There is a scepticism in Donegal around the blanket assurances and types of guarantees [from Europe]," said Sinn Féin councillor Padraig MacLochlainn, the party's national coordinator on Lisbon.

"Donegal has over 20,000 people unemployed. We have a situation where we really haven't seen a huge benefit from the EU in terms of infrastructure. There is anger in Donegal."

MacLochlainn said the result was a significant em­barrassment to the Tánaiste.

Earlier in the Letterkenny count, spoiled votes were scraped from the bottom of ballot boxes with a simple written message: "You didn't listen to me the last time."

"It's actually a story of a peninsula beside a border [with Derry]. The people of Inishowen feel they are the 33rd county of Ireland and this is a statement that they are not happy with the government," said Fine Gael TD Joe McHugh.

But they wanted that message, however small its messenger, to ring true in Europe as well.

This was not a shot across the bow of Dáil Éireann, it was a solitary flag flown high enough to be seen from Brussels. Or so they hope.

The joke around here is that they are setting up their own republic. This is about feeling ignored.

"That No vote cannot be underestimated and the government has to look at what they are not doing in this region.

"I think there was an acceptance that it was going to go through nationally but they wanted to lay down the marker," said McHugh.

For those canvassing, there was still a significant degree of confusion over the treaty and its many, varying interpretations.

"People wanted to engage [in debate] but the difficulty is that you can't engage one-on-one with everyone," said Fianna Fáil senator Cecelia Keaveney.