Live Election Count(Irish General Election Results)

[Ken Burch]

Source: RTE(Irish state broadcasting network

113 TDs have so far been elected to the 31st Dáil - 51 Fine Gael, 29 Labour, 12 Sinn Féin, nine Fianna Fáil, two Socialists and 10 Independents.

Read more: http://www.rte.ie/news/2011/0227/election_count_live_sunday.html

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For those who don't know Irish politics...this is a MASSIVE change.

The Fianna Fail party has ALWAYS been the largest party in the Dail(the Irish parliament)and has dominated Irish politics since 1932. The Fianna Fail government was the one that made the blindingly stupid decision to bail out the Irish banks, thus forcing massive cuts in social services and mass layoffs of government employees to close the resulting budget gap(and to conform to the brutal and humiliating bailout package from the EU).

The party is now in FOURTH place in seats, behind Sinn Fein(which was once the political wing of the IRA)and tied with the total number of independents elected so far(most of whom are left-wing independents), to say nothing of being well behind both Fine Gael(the other traditional governing party)and Labour(the traditional third-place party that sometimes joins coalitions with Fine Gael.

The Irish people have cast a massive vote against subservience to the banksters. I hope Labour doesn't do the stupid thing and join a coalition with Fine Gael-if it does so it will destroy itself and lose the chance it now has to eventually LEAD an Irish government.

[CBHagman]

1. Thanks for the update and the background.

I have not been following the story as closely as I ought to, so it helps to have a summary and context to boot. Cheers.

[Ken Burch]

2. You're welcome.

Somewhere, tonight, James Connolly is enjoying this.

[rurallib]

3. Thank you - May I ask a question

What kind of policy changes do you think will happen? Will the bail outs be negated? Will social services be restored or is it too late?

[Ken Burch]

4. In the short term, not much will change in terms of actual policy

Fine Gael has almost no actual policy differences with Fianna Fail(the differences between those parties are, if you can imagine it, far narrower than the differences between Clinton and Dole in 1996).

What WILL happen is that the left, in various forms, will have a much larger contingent of TD's(deputies in the Dail)than in the last election, and this will lead to a much wider debate about the choices Ireland should make in the future.

If Labour is stupid enough to enter a coalition with Fine Gael, it will open the door to forces to Labour's left-Sinn Fein, which will have at least 12 seats, the Socialists, and the large group of left-wing independents that have been elected.

This election has also marked the total collapse of the Irish Green Party-a formerly left-wing grouping that destroyed it's previously growing base of support by joining Fianna Fail's coalition and backing the brutal austerity program that FF imposed even BEFORE the banking collapse. Do you remember that YouTube clip of a TD shouting "fuck you!" at another TD during a debate? They guy who shouted that was Paul Gogarty, a Green. He was responding to opposition members who were calling him out for his party's support of right-wing economic and fiscal policies that represented a complete repudiation of everything the Greens once stood for. Gogarty, along with ALL other Green TD's, lost his seat tonight.

[rurallib]

13. Thanks for taking the time to explain this.

good luck to the land of my ancestors

[Ken Burch]

5. Most recent results

54 Fine Gael, 30 Labour, 12 Sinn Féin, 12 Fianna Fáil, two Socialists and 10 Independents. (that's 120 seats out of 166).

(some seats won't be decided until tomorrow. Ireland's Single Transferable Vote electoral system,a form of proportional representation,requires repeated counts of preference votes, and TD's are elected from multi-member constituencies).)

[Roci]

6. Here's a bit of real insight

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pu3IT1kGavE

[Ken Burch]

9. Well put.

Funny how you never hear anybody like that in any of the U.S. election shows when they bring in supposedly ordinary citizens to discuss the affairs of the moment.

[jacquelope]

7. Fianna Epic Fail?

The joke tells itself...

[Roci]

8. It isn't a funny joke

It's a tragic one. I know tens of people, artists mostly of one discipline or another who like Ireland for the tax situation, and believe you me, I hear things from them every week that would like to make you loose your lunch. The country has gone from one of the most dynamic economies in the world to being put on it's knees, and it's what Americans call the middle class- the working people- the laborers, artisans and craftspeople who are having money wrung out of them like a wadded up towel, while the rich, the bankers and the money people whose playing with (other people's) money have brought down an entire nation go Scott free. Imagine darned near everything that happened in the US about the time the Village Idiot left office, happening in a country like Ireland. Devastation isn't even the right shade of word for it. Most Americans can't grasp the magnitude of what's happened over there, because as bad as things were (and still are) over here, our economy and consumer standard of living insulates us, to a point. Not so over in Ireland. The worst is yet to come, because whatever government they elect (or can cobble together) still has to deal with the right proper mess that's been made, and it's still the aveage people who will suffer and foot the bill. If there's something bloody well funny in that, I wish you'd show me.

[jacquelope]

11. I wonder about how things could have been for Ireland...

Ireland should have taken the path of Iceland. Or could they, considering the nature of the Euro and all that?

I should add a disclaimer: at this point I'm in favor of hitting the global reset button. Shut everything down. Bring it so far down the rich industrializes will have nowhere to run. Hit the global reset button before nature hits the shutdown button.

[muriel_volestrangler]

12. Ireland's big problem was deciding to guarantee the debts of the banks

The politicians radically underestimated how big the debts were (and were quite likely misled about the size); they thought they were doing something that wouldn't cost much, but would help confidence in the banks, and the Irish economy. They were the only eurozone country to give such a complete guarantee, so I don't think the nature of the Euro forced them to do it. The economy would still have taken a big hit - so much of it had become devoted to building houses and offices in what was really a bubble.

But they could have kept the government finances in reasonable shape (government revenue and spending had been roughly in balance up to 2007 - loss of tax revenue due to contraction of the economy would have produced a deficit, but nothing like the Greek one) if they'd let private money (which was mostly from outside Ireland) take the loss, or most of it, anyway. The Irish property developers would still be screwed, but that has happened anyway; and the house price crash would have hurt those who bought at the peak, but, again, that has happened this way too; but they could have avoided saddling all taxpayers with so much debt, and the austerity measures.

[jacquelope]

19. Yup, that idea sounds similar to what Iceland did

Iceland really socked it to the banks, the shareholders and the bondholders. The results for Iceland were spectacular.
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010/debt211110.html

I wonder if Ireland's leaders are wishing they could go back in time now and do this all over?

[Ken Burch]

23. Er..did you mean Ireland's FORMER leaders?

n/t.

[jacquelope]

24. My bad! Heh.

Actually... being an American, I've really reached the limit on how far I can credibly opine about these parties. All I know is what the American press says about them, really.

Suffice it to say I hope this doesn't become a "meet the new boss, same as the old boss" moment if the Labours and Fine Gael decide to form a coalition, which as I understand it might be a Bad Thing.

[Ken Burch]

10. The last-minute endorsement from Charlie Sheen probably didn't help FF, either

:sarcasm:

[Ken Burch]

14. Latest results

Fine Gael 70
Labour 36
Fianna Fail 18
Independents 13
Sinn Fein 13
Socialist 2
People Before Profit Alliance 2
Green Party 0

[Imajika]

15. Isn't Fine Gael the conservative party?

Looks to me like the conservatives are winning this election.

My understand is if Fine Gael doesn't win an outright majority they will form an alliance with Labour. Still, this looks like a right wing win to me.

[Ken Burch]

16. Fine Gael and Fianna Fail are BOTH conservative parties

The only real difference between them is that Fianna Fail was, historically, somewhat more interested in ending British rule in the two-thirds of Ulster that are called "Northern Ireland"(they left the three most Catholic-nationalist counties, from the nine counties of historic Ulster, out of "Northern Ireland" at the time of partition, so really, "Northern Ireland" should be called "Ulst"). This didn't stop Eamonn De Valera, the dominant figure in Fianna Fail, from launching a scorched-earth campaign against IRA supporters in the Irish State once he became Taoiseach(prime minister)in 1932.

Fianna Fail and Fine Gael actually started as competing wings of the original Sinn Fein party. The split between Fianna Fail and the groups that eventually became Fine Gael goes back to 1922, when Fianna Fail began as the anti-Anglo/Irish treaty wing of Sinn Fein and Cumann na nGaedheal, Fine Gael's predecessor, was the party that backed the treaty(the agreement that partitioned Ireland and also required members of the Dail(the Irish Free State parliament)to swear an oath of allegiance to the British crown. Fianna Fail was originally a somewhat radical party in opposition, but became a party of stodgy conservatism and subservience to the Catholic hierarchy once in office.

There haven't been any meaningful differences between the two parties since the 1940's or so. And, in some cases, since Fine Gael has traditionally had to form coalitions with Labour and other small(often left-of-center)parties to form a government, its actual policies in government have been a little to Fianna Fail's left(not that Fine Gael was happy out that-being a party whose supporters were a bit wealthier and more upper-class than Fianna Fail's-but they knew what they had to do to stay in power.)

Ironically, given Fianna Fail's claim to be the more "republican" party, it was actually the first Fine Gael-led coalition, in 1950, that proclaimed the Irish Republic(Fianna Fail had never done so in its previous 18 years in power, for some reason). Fine Gael also nearly created a national healthcare system during that government-the Mother And Child Scheme-but it was thwarted by opposition from...wait for it...the Catholic hierarchy-who saw it as "communistic" that women and children below the ages of 16 should have free health care.

And, even though Fine Gael has the largest number of seats and won the popular vote(this is the first election in Irish history in which Fianna Fail did not end up as the largest single party in the Dail), there was a larger swing from Fianna Fail to Labour than there was from Fianna Fail to Fine Gael.

Thus...while a vaguely center-right party defeated ANOTHER vaguely center-right party(mind you, Fine Gael would almost certainly have bailed out the banks just as FF did, being a party of bourgeois money grubbers)the Irish LEFT, various forms(from Labour to Sinn Fein to the Socialist and People Before Profit Alliance groupings to a large bloc of mainly left-wing Independents)that were the big winners in the election.

There is now a chance for a major re-alignment of Irish politics-but it depends to a significant degree on whether the Labour Party, a group that could sit as the Official Opposition if it wished to, is stupid enough to form ANOTHER coalition with Fine Gael-a coalition that could only lead to Labour having a massive loss of votes at the next election, when Fine Gael may be punished as severely as Fianna Fail was this time if it imposes more austerity.

[Imajika]

21. Thank you for the great information...

That was very informative. I got more out of your post than pretty much anything I've read about this so far.

The media blurbs I've seen just suggest the right wing won in Ireland and will form the next government - most likely with labor as a junior partner.

[Ken Burch]

22. That's how the MSM WANTS people to see it.

They'll spin anything to be a "triumph for 'market values'". Their masters won't tolerate any other interpretation.

[Ken Burch]

17. Interesting fact in this election

The second-highest popular vote total for any candidate in the election was received by a Sinn Fein candidate, Pearse Donnelly, who was standing in the Donegal South West constituency.

Given the degree to which Sinn Fein were considered political lepers in the Republic even a few years ago, this is an astonishing result.

[muriel_volestrangler]

18. Ireland's next leader Enda Kenny vows bailout review

Ireland's incoming leader has promised to work to renegotiate the country's crippling 85bn euro bail-out next week.

Enda Kenny of Fine Gael said he would fight for a cheaper loan deal from the International Monetary Fund and Europe.
...
Mr Kenny plans to start fighting for a cheaper loan deal on 4 March when the European People's Party, to which Fine Gael is affiliated, meets in Helsinki. He will follow that up at the European Council in Brussels the following week.

Mr Kenny said the IMF/EU bail-out was "a bad deal for Ireland and a bad deal for Europe".

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-12590868

[lovuian]

20. the Revolution turns to a tidal wave

Americans will figure it out Wisconsin is just the beginning

[muriel_volestrangler]

25. Union: Labour must reject Fine Gael

Jimmy Kelly, Unite regional secretary, said Labour had an opportunity to lead an invigorated opposition with a potential 60 seats.

He said: “The people did not vote for a Fine Gael overall majority.

“Their policies on privatisation, austerity and income cuts did not attract enough support and should not now be facilitated by the tired old fallback of coalition with Labour.

“The Labour Party has an historic opportunity to become the official opposition in the 31st Dáil, leading a greatly-expanded left-wing coalition.

http://www.irishexaminer.com/election/news/union-labour-must-reject-fine-gael-495483.html

Meanwhile:

Kenny, Gilmore begin coalition govt talks

It is understood Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny and Labour Party leader Eamon Gilmore have begun their meeting in Leinster House.
...
(Counting in final three constituencies)
...
Of the 154 seats in the Dáil now filled, Fine Gael has 70, the Labour Party has 36, Fianna Fáil has 18, Sinn Féin has 13, and Independents and others have 17.
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The Green Party saw all six TDs lose their seats.

http://www.rte.ie/news/2011/0228/politics.html

The Greens had been in coalition with Fianna Fáil; their credibility with their voters has been destroyed, for now.