Ireland’s incumbent parties look likely to hang on to power after a fractured election

DUBLIN — Ireland’s two long-dominant center-right parties looked likely to form a new government as results came in Sunday from a fractured national election, though with a reduced vote share and complex coalition negotiations ahead.

In an exception to the global anti-incumbent mood, outgoing governing parties Fianna Fail and Fine Gael took the two largest shares of the vote, narrowly ahead of left-of-center opposition Sinn Fein.

Under Ireland’s system of proportional representation, vote share does not translate neatly into seats in parliament. With about two-thirds of results declared, Fianna Fail was on course to be the biggest party in the 174-seat Dáil, the lower house of parliament, with Fine Gael and Sinn Fein battling for second place.

It’s certain that no party will have enough seats to govern on its own, and the most likely outcome is a coalition between Fianna Fail, led by Micheál Martin, and Fine Gael under outgoing Prime Minister Simon Harris. In that case either Harris or Martin — or possibly both, if they strike a job-sharing deal — will become Ireland’s next premier, known as the taoiseach.

Sinn Fein, which aims to reunify the Republic of Ireland with the U.K. territory of Northern Ireland, lacks a clear path to power because the other two parties say they won’t work with it, partly because of its historic ties with the Irish Republican Army during three decades of violence in Northern Ireland.

Ireland uses a complex system of proportional representation in which each of the country’s 43 constituencies elects several lawmakers and voters rank candidates in order of preference. As a result, it can take days for full results to be known.

“The people of Ireland have now spoken,” Harris said. “We now have to work out exactly what they have said, and that is going to take a little bit of time.”

The cost of living — especially Ireland’s acute housing crisis — was a dominant topic in the three-week campaign, alongside immigration, which has become an emotive and challenging issue in a country of 5.4 million people long defined by emigration.

The results of Friday’s election mean Ireland has partly bucked the global trend of incumbents being rejected by disgruntled voters after years of pandemic, international instability and cost-of-living pressures.

The next government, like the last, will likely be led by two parties that have dominated Irish politics for the past century. Fine Gael and Fianna Fail have similar policies but are longtime rivals with origins on opposing sides of Ireland’s 1920s civil war. After the 2020 election ended in a virtual dead heat, they formed a coalition, propped up by the Green Party.

The Greens had a devastating result, losing all but one of their 12 seats. This time, the winning parties may turn to left-leaning Labour or the Social Democrats, or to independent lawmakers, for support.

For all the focus on migration, anti-immigration independents made few breakthroughs. Ireland does not have a significant far-right party to capitalize on the issue.

Reelected Fine Gael lawmaker Paschal Donohoe said the main theme of the election was “the center holding.”

Nonetheless, the new government will face huge pressure to ease rising homelessness, driven by soaring rents and property prices, and to better absorb a growing number of asylum-seekers. The big parties’ share of the vote continues to decline, and voter disaffection expressed itself in support for small parties and independent candidates.

One of the more unorthodox independents was reputed organized crime boss Gerry “the Monk” Hutch, who saw a groundswell of support after he was bailed on money-laundering charges in Spain in November in order to run for election.

Hutch, who last year was acquitted of killing a gangland rival, came within a whisker of winning a seat in Dublin.
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