Under Ireland’s electoral system of proportional representation, in which voters list candidates in order of preference, counting can take a long time.
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With final numbers in a heavily fractured Dail parliament not expected until Monday, Gerry Adams dismissed any idea that his party would support one of the traditionally dominant forces in Irish politics – Fine Gael and Fianna Fail.
The results raise the question of whether the country’s next government should be a historic alliance of age-old foes – or whether there should be a second election.
With official Irish election results yet to trickle in, leaders of the governing Fine Gael and Labour parties say Ireland’s voters have demonstrated that they want a change in government, with 60 percent or more of voters picking an array of other parties, mostly on the left of the political spectrum.
Among the battered coalition’s biggest casualties were Fine Gael’s deputy leader and former health minister James Reilly, the party’s former justice minister Alan Shatter and Labour’s communications minister Alan White.
Labour won an unprecedented 37 parliamentary seats in 2011.
The poll found that voters gave Kenny’s current coalition partner, the left-wing Labour Party, just 7.1 percent of first-preference votes.
Sinn Fein will not help either of Ireland’s two main parties form a coalition government.
One party that gained in the vote was Sinn Fein, once seen as the political voice of the Irish Republican Army in Northern Ireland.
“The Warriors of Destiny” were founded in 1926 by Eamon de Valera, who had commanded a rebel unit in the Rising, became Sinn Fein’s president in the wartime rebel government, broke with Collins over the treaty and championed a disastrous civil war that created bitterness for generations.
Once upon a time, Ireland had a Sinn Fein party that sought to wrest the island from the United Kingdom.
“If you had the duel challenges of political instability coupled with a looming “Brexit” (after Britain’s In-Out EU referendum), the Irish bond market would find it very challenging”. There’s no more beloved example than the Healy-Rae dynasty of County Kerry, where two brothers have just scored the most lopsided wins of the 2016 election.
In Kerry the veteran Martin Ferris was struggling in another recast constituency dominated by independent brothers Michael and Danny Healy Rae.
“In the past this would have been anathema to them”, said Gail McElroy, political science professor at Trinity College Dublin, noting that both parties had ruled out such a deal ahead of Friday’s election.
But their mutual enmity, dating back almost a century to the Irish civil war, persists, prompting some to speculate that the only way to break the deadlock might be a second election that would put financial markets on edge.
But Noonan – the most powerful figure in the 5-year-old coalition government of Prime Minister Enda Kenny – thinks that the results still being announced Sunday point to a possible hung parliament.
“We may all be back here again very shortly”, Noonan said, speaking inside an election count center on Sunday.
An editorial cartoon in the Sunday Independent newspaper captured the national mood.
Taoiseach Enda Kenny was re-elected in the first count in Mayo, but remarked on disappointing results for Fine Gael. Micheal Martin counters: “Chaotic stability'”.
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Results suggest that Mr Kenny’s Fine Gael party will remain the largest in parliament, but will have only a narrow lead over its principal rival, Fianna Fáil.
