Ahern wins third term with Green support

Bertie Ahern confirmed his status yesterday as the dominant politician in modern Ireland by securing election for the third successive time as Taoiseach. Even leading opponents acknowledged his performance, describing it as remarkable and extraordinary.

He took office with the support of independents and two minor parties, principally the Green party, with sufficient support to give him a comfortable majority in the Dail.

He has, in a Blair-like declaration made several years ago, stipulated that this will be his last general election. Although this raises the question of when he will step down, the assumption is that he will stay in office for four years at least.

Over recent weeks, his Fianna Fail party hammered out a coalition agreement primarily with the Greens, who won half a dozen seats in the election which saw Mr Ahern making a strong showing but falling short of an overall majority. The Greens will be in Mr Ahern's new cabinet, and hope to ensure that the new government is more eco-friendly. The administration will also have the support of small right-wing Progressive Democrats. Although during the campaign all these parties "took lumps out of one another", in the words of one observer, they all entered into the familiar post-election process of finding enough common ground to work together.

Although some shadows of alleged financial irregularities have continued to dog Mr Ahern, his re-election will provide continuity of government. While the election campaign featured some extraordinary ups and downs, he has shown great skill in managing coalitions of disparate elements. His Fianna Fail party is in any case a famously pragmatic organisation whose basically centrist position has been known to change, chameleon-like, when it needs to.

Much attention has centred on the Greens and their leader, Trevor Sargent. He described the achievement of helping get his party into government as the proudest day of his life. But he instantly stood down as leader in line with his campaign pledge not to lead the party into a Fianna Fail-led coalition. This caused much surprise, since many other politicians have failed to fulfil such promises.

David McCullagh, an Irish radio political correspondent, said: "I think it [Mr Sargent's move] just completely blew away all the hardened old hacks that are used to people wriggling out of their commitments."

In the negotiations, the Greens won concessions but failed to shift the government on issues such as halting the construction of a motorway through the historic Tara area of Co Meath. But the party membership voted by more than 80 per cent to join the new government, a far cry from the days when some said it should not even contest elections. One Green representative said: "Politics is the art of the practical, the art of the achievable."