They likewise have ruled out cooperation with Friday’s likely third-place party, the Irish nationalist Sinn Fein.
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It all means that Ireland could emulate other European crisis economies such Greece and Spain, both of which have held inconclusive elections in recent years and have struggled to form a stable government.
Yet polls show that Fine Gael and its chief governing partner, the Labour Party, have not been able to convince voters they deserve to return to power with a majority in parliament.
As the Taoiseach made a final push for votes on Dublin’s Leeson Street Bridge, he took a second glance at a volunteer with a strangely familiar face in a Fine Gael windcheater. But many voters say they’ve yet to feel relief following years of soul-sapping cuts and tax hikes, including unpopular new charges on property and water. “It is a clear choice between continuing on the path of recovery with Fine Gael, or putting your hard earned progress at risk by handing it over to those who wrecked our country in the past, or those who would wreck it in the future”, he said as he called the election three weeks ago.
The parties and candidates will again out in force hoping to convince people to vote for them. Still, the nation’s debt office this month auctioned 1 billion euros ($1.1 billion) of 10-year bonds at a record-low yield, even as an inconclusive election result looms.
His comments were a thinly-veiled criticism of his center-right opponents, the Fianna Fail party, which was in government when a near-simultaneous collapse of Ireland’s banking and housing sectors left the country on the brink of bankruptcy.
Under Kenny’s stewardship, Ireland has dramatically turned the economy around.
Combined, the two parties will nearly certainly exceed 50 percent.
The Fianna Fail leader has been popular across a number of markets, which has seen his price to be the next Taoiseach tumble from 14/1 in January to just 9/2, and he is now odds-on at 5/6 to be the next Tanaiste, having been backed from 7/4.
“For both parties, such an arrangement would represent a poisoned chalice, particularly because of the opportunity Sinn Fein would gain in becoming the main opposition voice”.
But such an arrangement might not last much more than a year, O’Malley predicts.
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Fianna Fail drew between 18 percent and 23 percent support across the polls, compared with 17 percent in the 2011 election.
