#HomeToVote: Thousands return to Ireland to take part in same-sex marriage referendum

As Ireland goes to the polls in a landmark referendum on whether to legalise gay marriage, thousands of voters travelling home from overseas to take part shared their journey on the #HomeToVote hashtag.

In the last 24 hours, the hashtag had been mentioned over 27,000 times, according to analytics from Twitter.

As Irish expats across the globe headed home in their droves, #HomeToVote began to trend on social media, as many making the trip shared their stories with the world.

Many of those travelling back to Ireland are coming from the UK and Western Europe, and flights back into Irish airports today have been fully booked for weeks, according to the New York Times.

Others have come from as a far away as the US, Australia, the Far East and Canada to take part.

A London-based group, Get The Boat to Vote has helped to organise trips back by rail and ferry.

This homecoming has been brought about by a quirk of Irish law that doesn't allow citizens of the Republic to vote from abroad.

Irish musician Hozier was part of the homecoming.

A heat map from social media monitoring service Trendsmap shows blooms of colour as the hashtag gained momentum online.

Voter turnout is expected to be exceptionally high, and high numbers have been reported in towns and cities across the country and there have been reports across Irish media of large numbers of young people casting their ballots.

More than 3.2 million people are being given the chance to have their say on equal marriage, and the huge influx of young and first time voters was said to be creating some issues in some polling stations including people arriving with no identification or polling cards.

The counting of ballots starts in the 43 constituencies at 9am tomorrow, and a picture of how tight the contest has been should emerge by midday.

Opinion polls put the Yes side well in front until a week ago, but concerns have been growing about undecided voters - around a quarter of those polled declined to declare their intentions.

The Yes campaign has been backed by all the main political parties but a small number of backbenchers are expected to vote No.