Ireland: Governing party suffers severe defeat at the polls

DUBLIN — If there were people walking around during the national election on Friday who were passionate supporters of the ruling party, Fianna Fail, they were doing an excellent job of keeping it secret.

“I think Brian Cowen was probably the worst taoiseach we’ve ever had,” said David Ryan, 76, a retired businessman, using the Irish word for prime minister and speaking of Fianna Fail’s former leader. “I am totally angry,” Mr. Ryan went on — not just at Mr. Cowen, who resigned last month, but at the Irish banks whose spectacular debts his government promised to guarantee on a fateful day in 2008. “They were totally corrupt.”

The results of the election will not be announced until late Saturday. But an early exit poll predicted a crushing defeat for Fianna Fail, one of modern history’s most successful political parties, which has been in power for almost 60 of the last 80 years, most recently from 1997 until the present.

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