Ireland holds election following bailout

Ireland's government prepared for defeat and the country for more uncertainty, as angry voters went to the polls in an historic election Friday triggered by the humiliating collapse of the "Celtic Tiger" economy.

The opposition Fine Gael party has enjoyed a wide lead in opinion polls during a campaign dominated by debate on how to rebuild an economy brought down by the collapse of a property boom, which in turn led to a bailout of Ireland's banks.

But whoever wins will find their room for manoeuvre limited by the bankers of Europe and the International Monetary Fund.

Meanwhile, with unemployment at more than 13 per cent, the young and jobless are heading for ports and airports, while the nation reels from tax increases and public service cuts. 

The opposition has used Ireland's dire economic situation as a rallying call for change — Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny, 60, campaigned in northwestern Ireland on Thursday, urging voters to "turn your anger into action."

The governing Fianna Fail party is bracing for a rout. It led the government through Ireland's boom years in 1994-2007 and into the economic meltdown that precipitated a humiliating bailout from the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

In his final appeal on Thursday, Kenny spoke of a nation "reeling from the national confidence trick pulled on us by the government and those they ceded power to: developers and banks.

Every week, a thousand mothers and fathers watch their children pack up their lives, put their degrees in beside their dollars and their bitter disappointment and head for Sydney, Brisbane and Vancouver."

"I'm asking people to turn their anger into action and vote with their power, vote with their pride, vote for our plan — the only plan — that will get Ireland working," Kenny said.

The Labour Party hoped to pile up enough votes to deny Fine Gael an outright majority in the Dail, the lower house of Parliament, and secure Labour a place in a coalition government.

Fine Gael's supporters

That pitch appealed to Mark Fortune, a civil servant who fear Fine Gael's plans to cut 20,000 public service jobs.

"I think Labour would hold them back a bit," Fortune said. 

Margaret Leehy, a young nurse, wanted to vote for Fine Gael but she was far away from the constituency in Cork where she is registered.

"I think they are the best of a bad lot," she said, adding that she and her husband are both working full time to make ends meet.

Ireland's plight has inspired a lively contest with a record 566 candidates, including 179 independents for the 166 seats in Ireland's lower house in parliament, the Dail. Nearly 49,000 people have rushed to register to vote in recent weeks.

Opinion polls suggest that Ireland's 3.1 million voters will usher in a new government led Fine Gael party, which until now has been the perennial runner-up to Fianna Fail.

Fine Gael has held a comfortable lead throughout the campaign with support nearing 40 per cent, large enough to inspire speculation it might win the 84 seats needed for a majority in the Dail.

Labour has bumped along near 20 per cent, ahead of Fianna Fail. Sinn Fein, the Northern Ireland-based party that supported the Irish Republican Army, is expected to gain seats.

Fine Gael's big advantage may be simply that it isn't Fianna Fail, the party in power when the good times stopped. 

"I don't think there's a great deal of difference," said Michael Marsh, professor of comparative political behaviour at Trinity College Dublin.

The most significant distinction among the three leading parties, Marsh said Friday, is that "Labour is speaking a bit more about pump priming … and that dreaded word, tax."

John Webb, who said he voted for Fine Gael as "most likely to clean up the mess," feared that old loyalties would reassert themselves and that Fianna Fail would do better than opinion polls indicated.

"It all goes back to the civil war, though none of them fought in it," Webb said.

Fine Gael traces its ancestry to the revolutionaries led by Michael Collins who accepted a treaty with Britain in 1921, then fought a war with Fianna Fail's founders, who rejected the treaty and refused to take seats in the Dail until 1932.

Fianna Fail's fall

Fianna Fail has been in turmoil: Brian Cowen, the Taoiseach (prime minister), had fallen to record low popularity and resigned as party leader before the campaign. New leader Micheal Martin appears to have steadied the party without markedly improving its standing in opinion polls.

In Ireland's proportional representation system, percentages do not readily translate into Dail seats but the larger parties tend to get a bigger proportion of Dail seats than their popular vote share.

Michael Gallagher, a political scientist at Trinity College, says the large number of independent and minor party candidates may work to the advantage of the big three, yielding a larger than usual premium on vote share.

Voting on Friday continues until 10 p.m. local timethroughout the country, and the count begins Saturday morning.