Labour is on course to recover its 1999 losses, writes Arthur Beesley, Political Reporter.
Mr Pat Rabbitte has gains to show after his first elections as leader of the Labour party and he will also be pleased that Fine Gael appears to have arrested its dramatic collapse in the last general election.
But while Labour was on course last night to recover its losses in the 1999 local election, it was clear that Sinn Féin was the biggest beneficiary of the swing against the Government.
Labour became the strongest party on Dublin City Council. The party also looked likely to claim its first European Parliament seat outside the capital for a quarter of a century thanks to Mr Peter Cassells in the East constituency.
Labour expected 100 local authority seats, a figure in line with targets suggested last week. But after Sinn Féin took the spoils from Fianna Fáil's worst local election, Labour will have to work hard with Fine Gael and the Greens to find ways of securing anti-Government votes in the next general election.
Mr Rabbitte's insistence that he will not do business with Fianna Fáil has always implied that he was depending on a Fine Gael recovery for him to be in a position to lead Labour back into a coalition government.
With these elections indicating that Mr Enda Kenny's efforts to revive Fine Gael have begun to take effect, the ground has now been set for deeper co-operation with Labour.
If a recent series of joint private members' motions with Fine Gael and the Greens does not amount to a pre-election pact, agreement on a joint policy programme will be on the agenda as the Opposition moves to challenge the Government before the next election.
In the campaign just ended, Mr Rabbitte did not specifically urge his supporters to transfer their votes to Fine Gael and the Greens. Some vote-watchers in Labour said yesterday that there was "not a bad pattern" of transfers from Labour to Fine Gael and vice versa but they said it was unstructured.
Any pre-election pact will seek to establish a system to develop more efficient transfer patterns between the main Opposition parties.
Figures late last night indicated that Labour was set to take some 11 per cent of the overall national vote in the local election, up from 10.89 per cent in the previous election. The tally of seats represents a gain of 20 from its performance in 1999, when it lost seats after the merger with Democratic Left, Mr Rabbitte's old party.
Labour won 15 seats in Dublin City Council, up from 13. The result in Dublin City Council leaves Labour in a position in which it may well have to reach a deal with Sinn Féin in order to strike a rate for the council.
Mr Rabbitte's stated aim in the run-up to this election was to put candidates in place who would be in a position to fight for seats in the next Dáil election.
Chief among these will be Ms Ivana Bacik, who looked like narrowly missing a second European seat for the party in Dublin. Mr Proinsias De Rossa was set last night to regain his Euro seat.