Irish PM calls parliamentary election for February 26

Feb 3 Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny said on Wednesday he will ask the country’s president to dissolve parliament to clear the way for parliamentary elections.

Kenny, Ireland’s leader since 2011, fired the first shot of the three-week campaign Wednesday in a social media video message.

Ex justice minister Dermot Ahern insisted that he was not suggesting Fianna Fail should form a coalition with Enda Kenny’s party, but rather that they repay their opponents’ favour of the late 1980s when Fine Gael’s Alan Dukes supported a minority Fianna Fail government.

Ireland exited its global bailout mid-way through Kenny’s five-year term, when a quicker and stronger recovery than elsewhere in Europe took hold.

Left-wing nationalists Sinn Fein, the former political wing of the Irish Republican Army, lost two points to 19 percent.

Polls show Fine Gael with around 30 percent of votes and Labour at or below 10 percent, leaving them more than 10 seats short of a parliamentary majority of 80 and with no obvious alternative coalition in view.

While high levels of emigration has been a factor in keeping unemployment down, McQuaid said the fall to 8.6 percent last month from 8.8 percent in December and a 2012 high of 15.1 percent showed the labor market had “improved dramatically”.