Shifting winds of change in voting results make electoral history

POLITICAL earthquake: Fianna Fáil’s invincibility missing presumed dead, Brian Cowen’s authority fatally wounded amid the rubble.

The tectonic plates of Irish electoral history shifted forcefully over the weekend with the aftershocks still being felt as ministers desperately searched through the debris for a way out of the disaster zone.

The Taoiseach faced into another day of despair as his party was finally bested by the old civil war enemies for the first time and its vote plunged to a pitiful all time low, collapsing to a distant third in Dublin and the likely humiliation of having no MEP in the capital as the final blow of the whiplash sting from an angry electorate.