Dublin - Ireland's Green Party voted late Wednesday to join
a government coalition just one day before the new Irish parliament
is to reconvene.
The party approved the deal with a large majority. Two-thirds of
the votes were required in order to accept a draft deal hammered out
late Tuesday with the Fianna Fail (FF) party of Prime Minister Bertie
Ahern, which won the largest number of seats in the May 24 election
but fell short of an overall majority.
Green Party leader Trevor Sargent stepped down after the vote. He
had said he planned to abandon his post rather than enter a FF
government. He said the draft programme 'would mean major changes in
people's employment and quality of life,' national broadcaster RTE
reported.
The six seats won by the Greens add to FF's 78 and the two
remaining seats that existing coalition partners the Progressive
Democrats (PDs) managed to hold on to after their vote collapsed to
give a slim majority in the 166-seat lower house or Dail.
Ahern has also been in discussions with the five independents to
secure a bigger majority for the new government which is due to be
confirmed by the Dail Thursday.
The Green Party had expressed concerns about entering government
with the liberal free-marketeer PDs, and had aligned itself during
the election campaign with the opposition Fine Gael and Labour
parties in a so-called 'alliance for change.'
The results in the May 24 election were: FF 78 seats, Fine Gael
51, Labour 20, Greens six, independents five, Sinn Fein - the
political wing of the dormant Irish Republican Army (IRA) - four, and
the Progressive Democrats two.
© 2007 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur 
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