Irish Examiner view: Greens suffer the curse of Cassandra

It will be a strange country indeed where an alliance of the centre-left does not include some representatives from the party with the most robust environmental credentials

The Green Party's Neasa Hourigan and Roderic O'Gorman. Mr O'Gorman said on Saturday: 'I suppose enough people weren’t feeling in their pocket that the Greens were as focused at insulating people from the cost-of-living spikes that the other two parties were.' Picture: Leah Farrell/RollingNews

Now that the numbers are in, time has to be spent reading the entrails, consulting the augurs, and drawing conclusions about what it all means for Ireland. Working arrangements must be put in place and alliances tested. There’s a heavy workload ahead.

While there is more debate, justifiably driven by Sinn Féin who are markedly more cheerful than 10 days ago, about a “realignment” of the left including the Social Democrats and Labour, much of this is speculative.