"The people have clearly decided not to re-elect this government and have given my party and the Labour party a very serious drubbing," health minister Leo Varadkar, who belongs to the Fine Gael party of prime minister Enda Kenny, said yesterday.
"I don't think that the obligation to form a government necessarily falls on us automatically," he told RTE television, suggesting that opposition parties could also negotiate to see if they could form a viable government.