Historic shift in Ireland as dominant party falls

DUBLIN (Reuters) – The party that has dominated Ireland since its independence 90 years ago faced political oblivion yesterday as voters inflicted a historic mauling over its role in the country’s economic collapse.

Fianna Fail, whose leaders negotiated independence from Britain and peace in Northern Ireland during eight decades as Ireland’s largest party, looked set to come in a humiliating third with less than two dozen seats in the 166-seat parliament.

The shift could usher in a new era in Irish politics, opening the way for younger leaders focused more on competing views of the modern state than the bitter legacy of Ireland’s 1922-3 civil war.

“It would be difficult to underestimate the historic scale of this collapse,” said Pat Leahy, a leading journalist and author of a history of Fianna Fail’s last 14 years in power.

“They have been the most successful political party in postwar Europe. This election marks a juddering end to that.”

After a decade of uninterrupted power, Fianna Fail had nowhere to hide when a vast real estate bubble burst in late 2008, pulling down the banking system and forcing the government to take a humiliating 85-billion euro ($115-billion) EU/IMF bailout.

The hasty retirement of the figures most associated with the collapse, including prime minister Bertie Ahern in 2008 and his successor Brian Cowen last month, did little to deflect a wave of anger at a party who schmoozed the developers and bankers who precipitated the country’s economic collapse.

“It has reaped the bitter and deserved reward for representing the interests of speculators and developers at the expense of the Irish people,” Socialist Party candidate Joe Higgins told national broadcaster RTE yesterday.

As votes slowly trickled out yesterday from Ireland’s complex system of proportional representation, the full scale of the meltdown became clear.