If Fine Gael and Labour take two seats each, scene is set for coalition

CONSTITUENCY PROFILE: DÚN LAOGHAIRE:THE OUTCOME of the battle for Dún Laoghaire's four seats will tell a lot about how the country is going on Saturday. If Fine Gael wins two seats, it will signal the party may well have a chance of forming a single-party government. If Labour leader Eamon Gilmore brings in a running mate, it will probably mean Labour will be in coalition with Fine Gael.

If one of the two Fianna Fáil TDs, survives it will be an omen that the party may survive and if a left-wing candidate comes through this “group of death”, it will probably signal a plethora of Independents in the new Dáil.

This time around, the constituency has been cut to four seats and there is no prospect of both Mary Hanafin and Barry Andrews making it back to the Dáil. An Irish Times/Ipsos MRBI constituency poll last week suggested Fianna Fáil has enough votes to hang on to one seat, with Mary Hanafin the favourite to pull it off. She was a little ahead of Mr Andrews in the poll and, crucially, appears to be more transfer- friendly. She is clearly in with a good chance but can take nothing for granted.

The danger for Ms Hanafin is that the national swing to Fine Gael could manifest itself in more support shifting from Fianna Fáil to the main opposition party in the last week of the campaign. Fine Gael foreign affairs spokesman Seán Barrett is assured of a seat.

If good party vote-management can ensure that his running mate, former Progressive Democrats councillor Mary Mitchell O’Connor, gets a sizeable chunk of the party’s first-preference vote, there is a strong chance of two Fine Gael seats.

Labour leader Eamon Gilmore is also assured of a seat but the question is whether his running mate, Senator Ivana Bacik, can also make it. Ms Bacik ran for Labour in the Dublin Central byelection and was then rebuffed when she sought a nomination for the general election in Dublin South East. She is campaigning hard in Dún Laoghaire and that, allied to a more even spread of the vote than Fine Gael, gave her the edge in the opinion poll.

The big question is whether the surge to Fine Gael in the last week will undo the Labour strategy.

Green Party TD Ciarán Cuffe has little chance of making it back to the Dáil for a third term. He was down to 4 per cent in the opinion poll and realistically is out of the running.

Left-wing activist Richard Boyd Barrett, who came close in 2007, is still in with a chance. His problem is that he appears to be stuck on the same share of the vote he got in the last election and it doesn’t look like being enough.

Daire Fitzgerald of the Christian Solidarity Party and five Independents are running in the constituency. The best known is the tireless local councillor Victor Boyhan, but none of them has any chance and all look like being swept aside as voters focus on who is going to form the next government.

DÚN LAOGHAIRE 4 SEATS

OUTGOING TDs: Barry Andrews (FF), Sean Barrett (FG), Ciaran Cuffe (Green), Eamon Gilmore (Lab), Mary Hanafin (FF)

CANDIDATES: Barry Andrews (FF), Ivana Bacik (Lab), Sean Barrett (FG), Victor Boyhan (Ind), Mick Crawford (Ind), Ciaran Cuffe (GP), Mike Deegan (Ind), Daire Fitzgerald (CSP), Eamon Gilmore (Lab), Mary Hanafin (FF), Carl Haughton (Ind), Mary Mitchell O'Connor (FG), Trevor Patton (Ind).

LOCAL ISSUES: Hospital services, Dun Laoghaire harbour access and planning but national issues like jobs, the economy and the state of the public finances predominate.

VERDICT: FG 2, Lab 2