Enda Kenny: We’ve learnt lessons from the general election

Enda Kenny has admitted that his party has learnt lessons from the general election as Fine Gael managed to break a deadlock and get their minority government elected yesterday.

Negotiation sources admitted talks were close to breaking down, when Fine Gael were trying to get as many TDs on board from the Independent Alliance and rural alliance.

Instead, Mr Kenny won 59 votes for taoiseach after he was backed by five TDs from the alliance and two from the rural grouping.

The five Independent Alliance TDs who voted in favour of Mr Kenny were Finian McGrath, Shane Ross, Sean Canney, Kevin ‘Boxer’ Moran, and John Halligan, while rural TDs Denis Naughten and Michael Harty also supported him.

Mr Kenny also received the backing of 50 Fine Gael TDs and unaligned Independents Michael Lowry and Katherine Zappone.

However, Fine Gael hope others may come on board in the coming weeks, including Roscommon-Galway TD Michael Fitzmaurice and Independent Dublin Central TD Maureen O’Sullivan.

Mr Kenny won the fourth taoiseach nomination vote 59-49 after eleventh-hour talks with Independents threatened to trigger another election. The 59-vote haul is just one more than the 58-seat target Fianna Fáil set for their rival in the minority government deal.

It means that if just two TDs are lost by the Government at any stage a general election will be called.

While Mr Fitzmaurice that said his concerns about turf-cutting had not been addressed, it is also thought that Galway West TD Noel Grealish from the rural alliance had disagreements with negotiators about a ministerial position he was offered and in the end did not back Mr Kenny.

Following the vote, Mr Kenny travelled to Áras an Úachtaráin to receive his seal of office, after making history and becoming the first-ever consecutively returned Fine Gael taoiseach.

President Michael D Higgins signed the warrant of appointment shortly after 3pm and Mr Kenny was officially reappointed.

Mr Kenny later returned to Leinster House and held face-to-face meetings with members of his new cabinet, where he informed them of their positions. He then returned to the Dáil with the new cabinet.

Delivering his speech, he said he hoped to respond in a fitting fashion to the many changes in the country with the new minority government.

“I guarantee that members of the government will do their utmost to work with everybody here,” he told the opposition in the Dáil.

He said there was one objective at the centre of the new government’s work and that would be to making people’s lives better right across the country.

Earlier, he also conceded his party had learnt lessons from the general election and that politics in Ireland had changed “forever”.

He said the reality is “the verdict of the people” in the election means “no party has any mandate to force or coerce” people into accepting controversial policies.

He said Ireland now has the chance to “write the next chapter of our history”.

In what appeared to be a double reference to events 100 years ago and those of recent months, he said politicians should follow in the footsteps of the 1916 Rising leaders by seeking reforms and “never forget the hard lessons” they have learned.