Eoghan Harris (Independent)

I congratulate Deputy Kenny, leader of Fine Gael, and Deputy Gilmore, leader of the Labour Party, for their stunning success in last week's elections. Deputy Kenny receives a very bad press and receives little recognition for the trojan work he has done for his party. I congratulate Alex White and Senators Bacik, John Paul Phelan and my old friend, Joe O'Reilly, all of whom copperfastened their positions for the future. That was all good news.

There has been much rubbish spoken about seismic shifts in Irish politics. Such a shift would be a very negative development. One of the clichés of my youth, when I was a student socialist, was the notion that Irish politics should be divided between left and right. If it were, we would have something like the type of politics represented by the two British National Party MEPs. The reason Irish democracy is the most stable in Europe, surviving fascism and armed struggles by the IRA, is that we have two centre parties which offer a change of tone and temper and which can move to the left or right according to changes in the political context. We do not need a left-right divide.

It has been a good electoral result. However, to those who predict that Fianna Fáil will disappear from the landscape, I say that would be a tragedy, just as it would be a tragedy if the same were to happen to Fine Gael. I am less pushed about the Labour Party.