Daniel O’Connell, the 19th-century leader who won the right for Catholics to sit at Westminster, and Daniel O’Donnell, the Donegal singer adored by grannies, are among 40 individuals on the shortlist of a contest to find Ireland’s greatest ever person.

The nominees were chosen by an opinion poll of 1,000 people and, while many of the entries are predictable, there are some notable absentees. There’s no room for Samuel Beckett, Brendan Behan, Patrick Kavanagh or Robert Boyle, one of the country’s most famous scientists.

Jonathan Swift, George Bernard Shaw and Sean O’Casey are also excluded, but two members of Boyzone, Ronan Keating and Stephen Gately, make it in, as does the band’s manager, Louis Walsh.

Political leaders such as James Connolly, John Hume and Pádraig Pearse, James Joyce and Bono are to be considered alongside crooner Joe Dolan, actor Colin Farrell, businessman Michael O’Leary, and John O’Shea of Goal.

Just three of the 40 are women. While the list includes male revolutionaries and politicians there is no room for Countess Markievicz, despite her role in the 1916 Rising. The three in contention are Adi Roche, the charity campaigner, Mary Robinson, the former president, and athlete Sonia O’Sullivan.

John McHugh, the chief executive of Tyrone Productions, which is making the programme for RTE, said using an opinion poll was the most open way of drawing up the shortlist.

The method used was arrived at in consultation with the BBC, which owns the format. A nationally representative sample, interviewed face-to-face, was asked to rank from one to five those they thought were the greatest Irish people, living or dead.

“There are a lot of people that you might think should be there and some people you think shouldn’t,” McHugh said. “That is what gets debate going. The interesting thing is what it says about what we think is important. There is not an enormous spread of women, it has to be said.”

Voting opens at 9am tomorrow on the RTE website but the fact that the vote is internet-based has already led to concerns that it may be fixed and could give some current candidates an advantage over historical nominees.

Eunan O’Halpin, a professor of contemporary Irish history, at Trinity College Dublin, said the poll was “wide open” for organisations and fan clubs to influence the outcome by mobilising voting campaigns.

“I remember when a Juventus player from Bray [Ronnie O’Brien] who [rarely] got to play for the first team was voted as a player of the year because his mates in Ireland sent round lots of emails and everybody voted for him,” O’Halpin said.

McHugh insists only one vote per ISP address will be possible in order to stop multiple and robot voting.

Roche said she was happy to be included but asked why Markievicz and Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington, a suffragette and nationalist, were not. “I feel privileged but I’m so disappointed that these other women aren’t on the list,” she said. “They are the unsung heroines of Irish history. The risks they took were extraordinary. So many times women are written out of history.”

Five living sportsmen make the grade, including footballers Roy Keane and Paul McGrath. The youngest person to feature is Brian O’Driscoll, Ireland’s rugby captain. While hurler Christy Ring is included, footballer George Best isn’t.

Five writers are nominated, and Seamus Heaney is the only one living. By far the most nominated field is that of politics, accounting for 13. Current politicians were excluded, as were RTE personalities.

The nominees are . . .

Music: Bono, Joe Dolan, Ronnie Drew, Stephen Gately, Bob Geldof, Ronan Keating, Phil Lynott, Christy Moore, Daniel O’Donnell, Louis Walsh

Politics: Noel Browne, Michael Collins, James Connolly, Eamon de Valera, Garret FitzGerald, Charles Haughey, John Hume, Sean Lemass, Jack Lynch, Daniel O’Connell, Charles Stewart Parnell, Pádraig Pearse, Wolfe Tone

Literature: Seamus Heaney, James Joyce, John B Keane, Oscar Wilde, William Butler Yeats

Film: Colin Farrell, Liam Neeson

Sport: Padraig Harrington, Roy Keane, Paul McGrath, Brian O’Driscoll, Sonia O’Sullivan, Christy Ring

Others: Michael O’Leary, businessman; Adi Roche and John O’Shea, charity founders; Mary Robinson, former president