Epic Fianna Fáil Fail!
I’ve been following the outcome since visiting last year. I couldn’t believe the straight faces your Taoiseach and his sidekick were sprouting. It is no surprise they got booted out.
That’s a difficult question to answer. I think I’d like to see a number of things happening. One of them would be a self reevaluation on the part of the state apparatus and the populace. We’re a small country. We are not and can never be a big fish. Politicians’ pay should reflect this and the number of political positions which are paid out of state coffers should be slashed. This is not just a cost cutting measure, it’s more that for our 4.4 million people we don’t need that many TDs or local councillors, that much representation. Although issues on the ground do vary, especially along rural/urban lines I think it would be more fruitful to think of our country in terms of a city metro area than a country. I could probably write an essay on other facets of things I’d like to see so I’m gonna go and think about it for a while and will either PM you or post my rant. 
Ah cheers but you summed it up fine.
I was at the Dublin City count from 8.30 yesterday morning, until the candidate whose campaign I was involved in (Mary Lou McDonald, SF, Dublin Central) was finally declared elected at sometime around 2am. Hell of a day. A great day for us, obviously; also great from the point of view of Fianna Fáil getting obliterated, but not so great from the point of view that a party that is if anything slightly further right than FF replacing them as the largest party. They’ll probably be going into coalition with Labour, which will put some sort of brake on them implementing the worst aspects of their policy, but given that Labour themselves were running essentially on a platform of not being terribly different from either of the main two, I don’t have high hopes that they’ll make much of a difference.
Delighted to see Joe Higgins of the Socialist Party back in the Dáil (he lost his seat at the last election), along with a few other United Lefties. Sorry that the one Labour candidate I would have enthusiastically supported (Ivana Bacik) doesn’t look like getting in.
There are still a number of seats left unfilled btw. Will be glued to Twitter for the rest of the day!