Scores On The Doors - General Election 2011
And so it is finally over.
Those of you from foreign climes may be wondering how an election that took place on Friday was still being decided on Wednesday, which is a fair question, but it isn't anything like as bad as it seems. The vast majority of the seats were decided by Saturday night with only a handful going over into Sunday and only two races, two very, very close races, pushing on into this week. Barring future legal challenge, we now have the full make up of the 31st Dáil.
RTE have an excellent set of pages going into great detail on the whole thing here, but it breaks down like this:
Fine Gael: 76
Labour: 37
Fianna Fail: 20
Sinn Fein: 14
Others: 19
"Others" there covers a multitude, there's the Socialist Party, People Before Profit and others under the banner of the United Left Alliance, and there are a host of independents, more left than right, but more than there's been in a while. There's no reference to the Green Party due to their parliamentary wipe-out.
So FG have failed to get a majority and are currently deep in negotiations with Labour to form the government everyone has been expecting for a year. There is much shouting to do before it's over, but I'd expect to see a Labour Táiniste along with maybe four other cabinet posts, leaving ten for FG, including, of course, the Taoiseach's chair for Enda.
The results pouring in on Saturday were, even with the expectations we'd set, shocking. FG were picking up seats everywhere, FF nowhere, and with the urban constituencies the fastest to count, Labour had an early surge. The biggest thing, as the count wore on, were the FF losses. The big names just kept on falling; Coughlan, Hanafin, C Lenihan, O'Rourke, Roche etc. etc. Only four of the remaining cabinet ministers (after the botched reshuffle in January) are left. It was also wonderful to see Cyprian Brady go in Dublin Central, but not as wonderful as Seán Haughey losing out in Dublin North Central. For the first time in over fifty years there is no Haughey in the Dáil, let the bells ring out.
Of course it isn't all good news. I obviously would have preferred a much larger number of Labour seats, but it's still a record and both of the candidates for whom my brother was working, Ruari Quinn & Kevin Humphreys were elected. But FG have a huge number of seats and they're a centre-right party, not my favourite sort. They have some really unpleasant people in there like Lucinda Creighton and I'm very, very worried that that change Enda went on about at length isn't, of course, any sort of change at all. But I'll give this proto-coalition a chance.
The Greens, well, they reaped what they sowed but I really hope, as I've said before, they go back to grassroots and rebuild.
The next few days will be just as interesting as the last few. Labour are having a special congress at the weekend to discuss going into coalition with FG. The 31st Dáil is due to meet for the first time this day week and by then everything needs to be in place.
But let us pause, in this time of discussion, as we hope FG & Labour can hammer out a plan they can both sign up to and that will be, above all, good for the country, let us pause and consider the electoral beating that FF have just taken and the fact that there is no member of the Haughey family in the Dáil. That, at least, is worth a smile.
Those of you from foreign climes may be wondering how an election that took place on Friday was still being decided on Wednesday, which is a fair question, but it isn't anything like as bad as it seems. The vast majority of the seats were decided by Saturday night with only a handful going over into Sunday and only two races, two very, very close races, pushing on into this week. Barring future legal challenge, we now have the full make up of the 31st Dáil.
RTE have an excellent set of pages going into great detail on the whole thing here, but it breaks down like this:
Fine Gael: 76
Labour: 37
Fianna Fail: 20
Sinn Fein: 14
Others: 19
"Others" there covers a multitude, there's the Socialist Party, People Before Profit and others under the banner of the United Left Alliance, and there are a host of independents, more left than right, but more than there's been in a while. There's no reference to the Green Party due to their parliamentary wipe-out.
So FG have failed to get a majority and are currently deep in negotiations with Labour to form the government everyone has been expecting for a year. There is much shouting to do before it's over, but I'd expect to see a Labour Táiniste along with maybe four other cabinet posts, leaving ten for FG, including, of course, the Taoiseach's chair for Enda.
The results pouring in on Saturday were, even with the expectations we'd set, shocking. FG were picking up seats everywhere, FF nowhere, and with the urban constituencies the fastest to count, Labour had an early surge. The biggest thing, as the count wore on, were the FF losses. The big names just kept on falling; Coughlan, Hanafin, C Lenihan, O'Rourke, Roche etc. etc. Only four of the remaining cabinet ministers (after the botched reshuffle in January) are left. It was also wonderful to see Cyprian Brady go in Dublin Central, but not as wonderful as Seán Haughey losing out in Dublin North Central. For the first time in over fifty years there is no Haughey in the Dáil, let the bells ring out.
Of course it isn't all good news. I obviously would have preferred a much larger number of Labour seats, but it's still a record and both of the candidates for whom my brother was working, Ruari Quinn & Kevin Humphreys were elected. But FG have a huge number of seats and they're a centre-right party, not my favourite sort. They have some really unpleasant people in there like Lucinda Creighton and I'm very, very worried that that change Enda went on about at length isn't, of course, any sort of change at all. But I'll give this proto-coalition a chance.
The Greens, well, they reaped what they sowed but I really hope, as I've said before, they go back to grassroots and rebuild.
The next few days will be just as interesting as the last few. Labour are having a special congress at the weekend to discuss going into coalition with FG. The 31st Dáil is due to meet for the first time this day week and by then everything needs to be in place.
But let us pause, in this time of discussion, as we hope FG & Labour can hammer out a plan they can both sign up to and that will be, above all, good for the country, let us pause and consider the electoral beating that FF have just taken and the fact that there is no member of the Haughey family in the Dáil. That, at least, is worth a smile.