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DUBLIN - Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern was on course to win a third successive term this morning (NZ time) as voters swung back behind his ruling Fianna Fail party rather than gamble the country's prosperity on an unproven coalition.
Partial results confirmed the findings of an exit poll with Fianna Fail winning 50 of the 83 seats allocated by 9.45pm (0845 NZT) with about 41 per cent of the vote.
The opposition Fine Gael-Labour Party alliance had won 25 seats, while smaller opposition parties such as the Greens and the Irish Republican Army's political ally, Sinn Fein, failed to make the gains they had expected.
Ahern's party colleague and finance minister, Brian Cowen, said he expected Fianna Fail to form the government and he would be keen to maintain a coalition with the Progressive Democrats (PD), despite losses suffered by the small pro-business party.
"We will be interested ... to see in what way we can bring this country forward based on the economic and political framework that we've set out for the people and for which we've got an increased mandate," Cowen told Irish television.
Losses for the PD mean Fianna Fail may yet have to woo Labour, the Greens or a handful of independents to secure a majority.
Ahern helped bring peace to Northern Ireland and continued Ireland's transformation into one of Europe's richest nations. But he had to fend off questions over his personal finances and a joint bid by the two main opposition parties to oust him.
In an election where there was little separating the main parties on tax and spending, opponents tried to tap into a sense that the spoils of Ireland's economic boom had been squandered, pointing to overstretched health and transport services.
Deputy Prime Minister and PD leader Michael McDowell lost his seat but appeared to have struck a chord with his slogan that a vote for the opposition would mean a swing to the left.
"The people, I think, having for the first two and a half weeks equated change with progress, ended up in the last week equating change with risk," Labour leader Pat Rabbitte said.
The exit poll gave the governing parties a combined 44 per cent, down from 46 per cent that secured them 89 seats in the 166-seat Dail (lower house of parliament) in 2002.
The poll showed support for Fianna Fail at 41.6 per cent, little changed from the 2002 election but higher than the 38 per cent registered in the last opinion poll of the campaign.
The most likely opposition government, known as the 'rainbow coalition' and made up of centrist Fine Gael, left-leaning Labour and the unaligned Green Party, had a 41 per cent share.
Fine Gael refused to concede defeat, saying a number of key constituencies had still to be counted.
"To say that Enda Kenny won't be Taoiseach (prime minister) is to presume a lot," Frank Flannery, Fine Gael's director of elections, said of his party leader.
Sinn Fein, which entered a ground-breaking new government in religiously divided Northern Ireland this month, does not look to have made the breakthrough in the south it had sought.
The exit poll showed backing for the party at 7.3 per cent, which was up slightly but short of the 9-10 per cent expected.
- REUTERS
