Sinn Féin will not be changing the direction of the party after poor performances in the local elections, Mary Lou McDonald has said.

The Sinn Fein president has admitted that her party's failure to get their support base out to vote was a major factor in their poor performance in the local elections.

The Sinn Féin vote is 12% down on the 2014 local elections in Dublin with a 9% fall in support in Cork.

However arriving at the Ireland South constituency count in Cork's Nemo Rangers GAA club, Ms McDonald said the party would not be changing direction on their policies.

We are an Irish republican party, we are a party of social justice and equality we are a party of Irish unity, those are our fundamentals and no I don't believe that any of that needs to change or will change.

"I do think that we need to reflect on how we connect those issues for the communities that we serve. So of course we have to reflect, but we are Sinn Féin we are Irish republicans, that was the case 100 years ago that is the case today, that's the constant, that won't ever change," she said.

"We have to examine now how we can be more effective, how we can be more successful, how we can bring more people with us on issues that I believe are hugely, hugely important."

Asked if she could pinpoint the significant fall off in support, Ms McDonald said: "I think a mixture of things I think certainly the surge to the Greens was not something that was anticipated, the strength of it, that really shaped the whole election.

"In some cases we have to ask ourselves questions around how we mobilised around the election and how we communicated with our own voter based.

"What we can say is this was not our best day out," said Ms McDonald.