Analysis:The election has almost brought us back to a 2 1/2-party system, writes Stephen Collins, Political Editor
Fianna Fáil's stunning election performance puts Bertie Ahern in a commanding position to form a third administration in a row.
After an uncertain start to the campaign the party came roaring back in the past 10 days. Fianna Fáil will have to rely on smaller parties or Independents to retain power. The position will only become clear when all the seats are filled but one way or another it will be in the driving seat in government.
The strength of the party's performance was based on a strategy of defending all of its existing seats, particularly those that were widely regarded as being under threat.
Resources were poured into the constituencies where the party strategists reckoned seats might be lost and a big push was made to promote candidates in the local media.
A huge effort was also made to run precisely the number of candidates for the targeted number of seats and to split the vote evenly between them. This worked like a dream in most constituencies. It gave the party the kind of massive seat-bonus it won in 2002 and which few people had expected to be repeated.
The irony of course was that the strategy did not apply to the Taoiseach's own constituency where three candidates were put forward for two seats and where no attempt was made to split the vote on the first count.
There was clearly a surge to Fianna Fáil in the last week of the campaign. It is attributable to a number of factors. One of them was the television debate between Bertie Ahern and Enda Kenny but the underlying reason was that as the undecided voters finally came to make up their minds they opted for stability rather than change.
When push came to shove the issue of public services, on which the alternative government had set so much store, were not as important to voters as economic stability.
The outcome of the national campaign and the constituency strategy was that Fianna Fáil again came close to the overall majority that eluded it five years ago. As in 2002 it was something few would have forecast at the outset of the campaign.
An unquantifiable factor in the Fianna Fáil bounce was the Taoiseach's high profile attendance at three events to mark the success of his strategy on Northern Ireland, the opening of the powersharing Executive, the trip to the Battle of the Boyne site with Rev Ian Paisley and the address at Westminster.
These events appear to have consolidated Fianna Fáil's republican credentials and to have denied much of this ground to Sinn Féin whose performance was below expectations.
A remarkable feature of the election result was that Fine Gael also came very close to realising all its targets and will come back to the 30th Dáil with some 50 seats. Fine Gael strategists believed that if they broke through the 50 seat barrier and Labour held its own they would be in a good position to get into office.
In the event the party came very close to its objective and Labour held up reasonably well but the two parties did not come close to winning office due to the unexpected vigour of the Fianna Fáil performance.
The strength of the Fine Gael recovery was almost as big a surprise to the pundits as the Fianna Fáil victory. The party has now re-established itself as the leading Opposition party, but the conundrum of how to make it back into government remains. The mountain it will have to climb next time will not be nearly as big but another stint in Opposition will be a bitter disappointment.
When the election was called few would have believed that Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael would do well on the day. The belief existed that one or other of them would have a good day and that the shape of the government would depend on which of them it was. In the event both Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael consolidated their positions but of course Mr Ahern and his party were the big winners because they are the ones who will be taking office on June 14th.
The reason the big parties did well and almost brought the country back to the 2½ party system that prevailed from the 1960s until the mid 1980s was because the smaller parties were squeezed and the Independents were virtually wiped out.
The meltdown for the Progressive Democrats was widely forecast and it was always going to be the toughest election in the party's existence. The PDs did well in their first election in 1987 when Fine Gael was in decline. By contrast the party was squeezed in 1989 and 1997 when Fine Gael did well. With Fine Gael widely expected to do well in this election the party was always going to be in difficulty.
The PDs attempted to meet the challenge by changing leaders last autumn. Michael McDowell took over as party leader and Tánaiste in an effort to try and meet the challenge but the strategy clearly did not work.
Paradoxically, by laying into the Opposition before and during the televised leaders' debate Mr McDowell probably helped Fianna Fáil to consolidate its vote.
He coined the memorable phrase that the alternative coalition led by Enda Kenny would be in thrall to "the left, the hard left and the leftovers", but that did not attract more support for his own party. Whether the Progressive Democrats now has a long-term viable future is an issue that will have to be addressed when the dust has settled.
Much more surprising was the poor performance of Sinn Féin and the Greens. It had been consistently forecast over the past two years that both parties would gain seats and opinion polls suggested that both could even double their numbers.
In the event both parties delivered very disappointing performances. Sinn Féin failed to pick up the two Donegal seats that almost all pundits had taken for granted. Instead they went to a resurgent Fine Gael which re-established itself as the main alternative to Fianna Fáil in the county.
Worse again for the party, Seán Crowe lost his seat in Dublin South West and the expected gains on the north side of Dublin city failed to materialise. A segment of the working-class vote that had appeared to be going the party's way in opinion polls reverted to Fianna Fáil in the election.
If the Fianna Fáil rise put the squeeze on Sinn Féin, the revival of Fine Gael had the same effect on the Greens. The party failed to increase its vote as expected and, instead, some of its leading figures were left struggling to hold their seats.
It appears what when it came to the crunch voters decided that issues like global warming were not considerations that were going to sway them in the ballot box and they voted on more immediate local and national issues.
The setbacks suffered by the Independents was another unexpected feature of the election. In 2002, more Independents were elected than at any time since 1957.
The Fine Gael revival and the strength of Fianna Fáil has reduced them to the handful of TDs that have been a more normal feature of Irish politics in recent decades.