An all party government could be the most democratic result for all

As the clock ticks down steadily to election day it is becoming clearer that the division of the parties in the new Dáil will look nothing like the last one. By now, most parties have mutually excluded coalescing with other parties.

Even if they wanted to do so, the latest polls indicate that the new numbers simply will not add up pairwise to produce any kind of hybrid with an overall majority, even allowing for the margins of sampling error.

The answer may be a government embracing all parties. If some parties will not get into bed with others, they might as well all get into bed together. As Bismarck famously said, politics is the art of the possible. We can expect some changes in the occupancies of the various leadership benches.