General Election 2007 - Health crisis must be the top priority

People may argue about the implications of today’s vote for years, or even decades to come, but it is important to bear in mind this is not just a political beauty contest to express a preference for who should be Taoiseach in the next Dáil.

As of today the alternative on offer for the people will is Bertie Ahern on behalf of Fianna Fáil, or Enda Kenny of Fine Gael.

Only once in the history of the State has other than the leader of one of the two main parties been elected Taoiseach. That was in the immediate aftermath of the 1948 General Election when the Fine Gael leader, Richard Mulcahy, made way for his colleague John A Costello, in the belief that the latter would have a better chance of forming what became the country’s first coalition government.