Counting began at 09:00 on 26 February, and the result was known in broad terms the following day. The tabulation of votes concluded with the election of
Seán Kyne to the final seat in
Galway West on the morning of 2 March. The election result was a catastrophe for Fianna Fáil. The party emerged with its lowest-ever vote, 17 per cent, and its smallest presence in the Dáil, 20 TDs. Its decline of 58 seats was the largest ever in a Dáil election. Of the six sitting cabinet ministers who stood for re-election, three –
Pat Carey,
Mary Coughlan and
Mary Hanafin – lost their seats. Coughlan's defeat was described as Ireland's "
Portillo moment" by
The Guardian. Another four former ministers were defeated, including former deputy leader
Mary O'Rourke and the former Ceann Comhairle
John O'Donoghue. speaks to
Newstalk at the
RDS count centre. Of six outgoing Fianna Fáil ministers who contested the election, three lost their seats, including Carey.What was left of Fianna Fáil's parliamentary ranks contained few obvious prospects for the future. It returned no female TDs; its only representative in Dublin was the outgoing Minister for Finance,
Brian Lenihan, who died from cancer three months after the election. The party's vote collapsed almost everywhere and among every social group. Fianna Fáil's internal transfer rate was historically low, contradicting the popular narrative that its remaining support base consisted of party loyalists. Fine Gael became the largest party in the Dáil for the first time in its history, electing 76 TDs with 36 per cent of the vote. It was eight seats short of a majority. The party won four seats in Enda Kenny's constituency of
Mayo, something no party had done before in a five-seater. Kenny won the largest first-preference vote in the country. Having lacked a TD in thirteen constituencies when Kenny became leader in 2002, the party now had a presence everywhere except
Dublin North-West. Its vote in Dublin had more than doubled since 2002. Although 76 seats was a record for the party, its vote share fell short of the 39 per cent won in
November 1982. Three Fine Gael TDs lost their seats to rivals from their own party. Labour won its highest-ever vote and seat total, with 37 TDs and a 19 per cent share. The party took the most seats in Dublin despite winning slightly fewer votes than Fine Gael. Labour made historic gains in
Clare,
Cork South-West, and most notably
Galway East, Eamon Gilmore's area of origin, where the party won a seat for the first time ever. It was the first time Labour had elected multiple TDs in Connacht since
1927. Poor vote management cost the party second seats in
Cork East and
Dún Laoghaire. While impressive, Labour's performance was regarded as underwhelming compared to expectations before the campaign, and left the party in a weaker position relative to Fine Gael than it had been the last time it formed a government with them in
1994. Sinn Féin elected 14 TDs with 10 per cent of the vote, its best result in its modern incarnation. Gerry Adams topped the poll in
Louth, attaining the third-highest first-preference vote in the state; the party won seats in every constituency in the
Border Region. In Dublin, the party gained TDs despite a relatively small increase in its vote. With the elections of
Pearse Doherty,
Mary Lou McDonald and
Peadar Tóibín, the parliamentary party was regarded as having a younger and more gender-balanced feel than previously. Sinn Féin now had enough TDs to gain full speaking rights under the Dáil's standing orders. After the election, Adams took over from
Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin as leader of the parliamentary party. Elsewhere, the Green Party lost all its TDs, despite speculation that
Trevor Sargent and
Eamon Ryan might survive. All but four of its candidates failed to win
a reimbursement of expenses; the party fell just short of the 2 per cent national vote needed to secure public funding, which had drastic implications for its continued ability to employ full-time staff. The United Left Alliance won five seats, including returning TDs
Joe Higgins and
Séamus Healy. Fourteen independents were elected, an increase of nine on 2007, including three who topped the poll in their constituencies:
Michael Lowry,
Shane Ross and
Mick Wallace. Turnout increased slightly on 2007. All opposition parties transferred strongly against Fianna Fáil, but preferencing between Fine Gael and Labour was well below its historic peak in the 1970s. Labour were the most transfer-friendly party. Of the TDs elected to the 31st Dáil, fewer than half had been members of the 30th, and there was a record number of first-time deputies, among them the future Taoiseach
Simon Harris. The average age of the new Dáil was 49, similar to recent cohorts. A record 25 women were elected, though at 15 per cent of the total this still left Ireland well below the EU average. Labour's
Dominic Hannigan and
John Lyons became the first openly gay TDs. After the new Dáil began its term, an
indirect election was held for the
24th Seanad. Only two defeated Fianna Fáil TDs won election to the upper house,
Thomas Byrne and
Darragh O'Brien. Two former junior ministers,
Seán Connick and
Martin Mansergh, stood in the election and lost. All three defeated Fine Gael TDs won Seanad seats. These were:
Government formation Enda Kenny described the election result as a "democratic revolution" and moved quickly to form a government. While counts were still ongoing, Kenny and Eamon Gilmore met for eighty minutes on 28 February to discuss policies and portfolios. Labour wanted a 9–6 split of cabinet posts, but Fine Gael insisted on a 10–5 division to reflect the election results. They also disagreed on which party would get the finance portfolio. Brian Cowen allowed the two parties use of
Government Buildings and access to the civil service. The negotiating teams were briefed by
Central Bank of Ireland governor
Patrick Honohan and economist
Colm McCarthy, as well as officials from the
Department of Finance and the
National Treasury Management Agency. In spite of personality clashes between the two leaders, this information reportedly created a tone of constructive engagement, as the two parties became fully aware of the scale of the fiscal crisis. Labour insisted on maintaining child benefit rates and not introducing third-level fees. The two parties agreed to bring forward a Jobs Budget to stimulate the economy. A programme for what was described as a
Government of National Recovery was agreed late on 5 March.
Barack Obama at the
White House for Saint Patrick's Day. The following day, the agreement was ratified by the Fine Gael parliamentary party and a special conference of Labour delegates. Fine Gael TDs unanimously approved the programme, but two Labour TDs,
Tommy Broughan and
Joanna Tuffy, opposed it. The cabinet was to be divided 10–5 in favour of Fine Gael, but Labour got a
super junior minister and their choice of
attorney general. The Department of Finance was split, a measure planned before the election, and Labour secured the new role of
Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform. It was the seventh time in Irish history that Fine Gael and Labour had formed a government together. On 9 March, seventy-nine years to the day after
Cumann na nGaedheal had made way for the first Fianna Fáil government, Enda Kenny was
elected Taoiseach by the
31st Dáil by a record margin of 117 to 27. There was considerable goodwill towards the new government. As well as Fine Gael and Labour, several independent TDs voted for Kenny, and Fianna Fáil abstained. His cabinet was revealed later that day, with Gilmore as Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade, and Michael Noonan as Minister for Finance. Only two women were appointed to the new cabinet, one fewer than had been selected by Brian Cowen in 2008; there was surprise at the decision to make Joan Burton
Minister for Social Protection instead of giving her a senior economic portfolio. This decision was criticised by journalists Olivia O'Leary and
Justine McCarthy, who regarded it as sexist; it was reportedly a consequence of growing mistrust between Burton and Gilmore.
Analysis In the immediate aftermath,
Diarmaid Ferriter and
David McCullagh compared the election to
the 1918 election which had swept the
Irish Parliamentary Party from office and led to
Sinn Féin establishing the
First Dáil. Ferriter argued that Fianna Fáil would struggle to make itself relevant on the opposition benches.
Peter Mair remarked on parallels between Fianna Fáil's collapse and those of
Christian Democracy in Italy and the
Progressive Conservatives in Canada, as well as the slower decline of Northern Ireland's founding party, the
Ulster Unionists. Ferriter described the election as a personal triumph for Enda Kenny. The new Taoiseach had proven his doubters wrong and seen off a challenge from what the author termed "posh boys" in his own party. Though frequently underestimated, Kenny had demonstrated a "ruthless canniness" borne of three and a half decades in public life. The journalist Pat Leahy wrote that Kenny's combination of good humour and seriousness of purpose became popular with voters during the campaign. Ferriter also remarked that in common with European sister parties, the Greens had suffered from a fickleness in their support base.
Deaglán de Bréadún compared the Greens to "early Christians", saying their beliefs would endure despite an electoral trouncing. Internationally,
Bloomberg considered the election result a bad omen for other
euro zone leaders, including French president
Nicolas Sarkozy who was up for re-election in 2012. At the time, the election was the third most volatile in democratic Europe since 1945, after
Italy in 1994 and
the Netherlands in 2002. Although there had been a modest shift to the left, analysts wondered if 2011 qualified as a realigning election, given the survival of Ireland's traditional party system and the replacement of one government led by the centre-right with another. Writing a decade later, Ferriter described the vote as "revenge rather than revolution". The replacement of Fianna Fáil with a Fine Gael–Labour coalition represented historic continuity; Mair wrote that the volatility of the electorate in the absence of a major new party was virtually without precedent internationally. He said Ireland was now a "
one-and-two-halves party system", and believed Fianna Fáil would spend a long period in opposition but was likely to return to power in the medium term. A study by Stephen Quinlan and Martin Okolikj found that voter loyalty to Fianna Fáil had been declining in the 2000s, and the party had become increasingly reliant on the economy to buttress its support, especially among educated voters. Ferriter said it was ironic that the party's survival had been assured by the PR–STV electoral system it had twice tried to abolish in the twentieth century. According to the political scientist Gary Murphy, Irish policy-making had been hollowed out by
Social Partnership and an over-cosy relationship between government and business, leading to the bank guarantee's emergence from "a let's-hope-for-the-best mentality". A 2013 study said that although media outlets were under severe commercial pressure due to the economic crisis, there was less
horse race journalism in 2011 than at previous elections and a greater focus on policy. Two studies into the election outcome identified the growth of class-based voting behaviour, especially for Fine Gael among wealthier segments and Sinn Féin with poorer voters, and the emergence of a conscious left-right ideological split among the public. Peter Mair commented that although seismic, the election had not delivered real change, as the EU–IMF deal remained in place almost in its entirety and limited the new government's room for manoeuvre. He compared the situation to the emerging democracies of the Balkans in the 1990s, where external creditors had played a dominant role in policy, engendering popular anger and undermining the legitimacy of the democratic process. Political scientists Niamh Hardiman and Aidan Regan wrote that while Ireland had experienced remarkably little social conflict during the economic crisis, the collapse of Fianna Fáil had opened up space for more radical ideas at a time when faith in political institutions was at an all-time low. ==Aftermath==