David Higgins

Fine Gael party leader Enda Kenny today made it clear that an overall FG majority was not to be ruled out. The comments were made at the party’s annual think-in in Cavan. Fine Gael have never had an overall majority and they have always relied on forming a co-alition with Labour.

While the party is set to become the largest party in Ireland, surpassing Fianna Fáil’s number of Dáil seats for the first time it’d be a miracle to get more than 83 seats in the 166 seater Dáil. Fine Gael currently have 51 seats.

Fine Gael will get its largest number of seats ever, and Fianna Fáil its lowest. Under normal circumstances this statement would imply a FG majority however there is one group of politicians that will see the largest rise in support in the next general election: the left.

Labour, People Before Profit, The Socialist Party and Sinn Féin will all be out in force next election and they’re all due to take Dáil seats. Labour could get around 30 seats, up from 20, PBP will get at least one seat, maybe 2. The socialist party should get two seats, and Sinn Féin is looking to get 7-10 seats, up from 4. Altogether left-wing parties will get around 40+ seats in the next Dáil based on current polls.

However should Fine Gael actually get over 83 seats then this must go hand in hand with a Labour or Sinn Féin increase. This would probably put the left vote anywhere up to 50 seats.

Independents could get up to 10 seats however a more realistic approach says they’ll get around 5.

So let’s say that Fine Gael get a safe 85 seats in the next election. Add that to the 55 seats mentioned above and you have 140 of the seats filled. Only 26 seats left for Fianna Fáil?

On 17% of the vote FF statistically have 28 seats however it’s certain that they’ll get more. Fianna Fáil is the party of power and it won’t be giving up that title too easily. They always get more seats than their % vote suggests. If we look at the 2002 general election we see that FF got 41% of the vote. Multiply this by 1.66 (dail seats equation) and you get roughly 69 seats. However in 2002 Fianna Fáil got 81 seats!

So, it’s fair to say that unless there is another erosion in the seemingly endless ‘core’ FF vote then we won’t see them on less than 35 seats or so.

At present there is scope for a FG minority government however who would support them? PBP, socialists and Sinn Féin are all radicals so that’s 10 votes immediately out of consideration. This only leaves independents and many of them would come under serious fire for supporting more cuts that FG will have to make in government. This is unworkable for them even if there would be a financial benefit for his or her constituency (The Jackie Healey-Rae method).

So until such time as support is there for Fine Gael, themselves and Labour better get used to each other and maybe try and find consensus on issues such as banking.

One upside of the presumed co-alition is that it will be the first co-alition to exceed 100 seats. This is well above the 83 requirement and it will, in 5 consecutive years set another record.

Fine Gael’s second term in a row