Ireland heads to first election after bailout exit: guide

“They won’t make the majority that’s needed”, said architect Briain Colgan, after voting in a south Dublin constituency where established parties were pitted against a spectrum of independents and new groups in a race for four seats. That is far below the 36 percent it won five years ago and the 30 percent opinion poll rating it enjoyed at the start of campaigning.

Ireland’s uneven recovery was the focus in the election in which voters punished the government for years of austerity despite warnings that political instability might damage a nascent recovery.

“There is anger over tax increases and cuts to services, with many voters pointing to increased homelessness and poverty and asking: ‘what recovery?'”, the paper says.

“We’ve come through some calamitous and troubling times”.

“It would be nice for someone to present their vision, you know a passionate vision”, said Lorna Wallis, a voter in Dublin who said she would be backing independent candidates.

A voter leaves a polling station in Malahide, Ireland, Friday, Feb. 26, 2016.

Once hailed as the “Celtic Tiger”, the Irish economy boomed in the run-up to the 2008 financial crisis – which burst Ireland’s property bubble, leaving its banks with unsustainable debts and the government with a ballooning deficit.

Members of Ireland’s 158-seater legislature, Dail Eireann, are elected on the basis of a universal, direct and secret ballot.

With partners Labour in line to win just 7 to 8 percent of the ballot, the only viable option for government appeared to be a problematic alliance between historic rivals Fine Gael and Fianna Fail, whose vote the poll showed rose to 23 percent.

He faces trial on charges of false imprisonment of the Labour leader and deputy prime minister Joan Burton during a water charges protest – a case that could result in a lengthy prison sentence.

“He’s on track to be become the first leader of his party to win a second straight term, even if he has to scramble to form a so-called rainbow alliance with more than two parties, or a first-ever grand coalition with Fianna Fail”, Bloomberg adds.

Others fear it would allow left-wing Sinn Fein, the former political arm of the Irish Republican Army, which polled at 15-16 percent, to establish itself as the main opposition party. Fianna Fail, in power since 1997, had offered enthusiastic support to a runaway property market that bloated free-spending Fianna Fail budgets for a decade – and ended in catastrophe for ill-regulated Dublin banks.

Before the election Fianna Fail leader Micheál Martin ruled out any chance of forming a government with Fine Gael saying “It’s not a consideration”. “His party wrecked this economy”.

But he said he possibility of Fine Gael and Fianna Fail working together would “not be easy”. A governing majority would require the support of at least 79 lawmakers.

The destination of their votes will have an impact particularly on the outcome of the final seats with the counts in many constituencies expected to go into next week.