Ahern on brink of winning third term

Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern was on course to win a third successive term yesterday as voters swung back behind his ruling Fianna Fail party rather than gamble the country's prosperity on an unproven coalition. Early results confirmed the findings of an exit poll with Fianna Fail winning eight of the 11 seats allocated by late afternoon.

The opposition Fine Gael-Labour Party alliance had won two seats, with smaller opposition parties such as the Greens and the Irish Republican Army's political ally, Sinn Fein, being squeezed.

"I think Mr Ahern is likely to be reelected Taoiseach (Prime Minister)," said Labour's Pat Rabbitte, leader of Ireland's second biggest opposition party.

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. Ahern's junior coalition partner, the pro-business Progressive Democrats (PDs), appeared to have lost support but their campaign slogan that a vote for the opposition would mean a left-wing government may have done enough to ensure victory. "The reality is that people have voted for the same again. It looks like people have decided, at the end of the day, that they can't afford not to have the present government," said Niall O Brolchain, the Green Party mayor of Galway city.

"The scaremongering by the PDs has actually worked quite well but it hasn't translated into votes for the PDs, I think it's actually translated into votes mainly for Fianna Fail."

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.