THE Irish people did not so much speak at the ballot box last week as scream their disapproval of the current government, and this was especially apparent around the capital.

Former Labour leader Dick Spring is predicting the party could become the largest in the years ahead.

The election disaster for Fianna Fáil is becoming clear tonight, with Tánaiste Mary Coughlan becoming the latest and most high-profile casualty of Election 2011.

More than a quarter of the seats for the 31st Dáil have now been filled and Fine Gael is still holding out to lead a single-party Government.

A WORD to new candidates.

THE intriguing battleground that is the Kerry South constituency is likely go right down to the wire but it looks as if the death knell could be about to sound for two of the country’s high-profile political dynasties.

IF Eamon Gilmore could not even defeat a long-serving minister of a discredited government in open debate, are we to conclude that the much-vaulted “Gilmore Gale” is little more than a puff of hot angry wind?

“I CARRY the spirit of Michael Collins here with me,” loser Fine Gael candidate Barry O’Neill declared, and he was right — but only in the sense that he’d just been assassinated by an audacious Sinn Féin ambush.