Fianna Fáil considers coalition move
Bertie Ahern was today considering a number of coalition options as the General Election entered its final stages.
With just 20 Dáil seats left to be filled, Fianna Fáil looked on course to capture 78 seats – just five short of an overall majority.
Following the dramatic collapse of the Progressive Democrats’ vote, after leader and Tánaiste Michael McDowell quit politics on losing his seat, speculation was mounting that we could see our first ever Fianna Fáil and Green Party coalition.
Trevor Sargent’s party was sitting on five seats and hoping to return with six.
Another option would be for Fianna Fáil to go into government with Pat Rabbitte’s Labour, which could finish with 20 or 21 seats.
It would be an extraordinary about-turn, however, for Mr Rabbitte who previously ruled out a coalition with Fianna Fáil and offered an alternative government during the election with Enda Kenny’s Fine Gael.
A third option would be to go into government for a third successive term with the Progressive Democrats and bank on the support of a number of independent TDs, as in 1997.
But with the smaller parties, including Sinn Féin and the number of independent TDs, dramatically reduced as the two largest parties Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael prospered at the polls, the exact composition of the next government was not clear.
Senior Fianna Fáil figures were keeping their cards close to their chest.
Meanwhile, in the Labour Party, a lot of soul-searching was going on about its candidates’ performance, with prominent figure Tommy Broughan criticising Pat Rabbitte’s election strategy.
Dublin North TD Joe Costello said: “We need to analyse what went wrong in our campaign because we clearly lost out in Labour strongholds where we would have been expected to take seats
“We are meeting as a parliamentary party next week to assess the way forward.”
Meanwhile, Sinn Féin was facing a battle to hold on to its Dublin South Central seat as Aengus O Snodaigh tried to keep Labour’s Eric Byrne at bay.
If he were to lose the seat, Sinn Féin would have no representative in Dublin.
