Irish crisis deepens as snap election nears

DUBLIN: Support for Ireland’s governing Fine Gael party fell in a poll on Saturday as a political crisis that has left the country three days away from the calling of a snap election showed no sign of being resolved.

Indian-origin Prime Minister Leo Varadkar’s minority government was on the brink on Friday after the party propping it up submitted a motion of no confidence in the deputy prime minister, weeks before a summit on Britain’s plans to leave the European Union where Ireland will play a key role.

Varadkar has said that if the motion put down by Fianna Fail, the main opposition party, is not withdrawn by Tuesday, he would be forced to hold an election before Christmas.

Support for his party dropped two points to 27% in the Sunday Business Post/Red C poll, only marginally ahead of the 25.5% it achieved at last year’s election and its worst performance in recent opinion polls.

Varadkar has said that there is still time to avoid the snap poll but neither side was ready to step down on Saturday, ahead of the motion of no-confidence motion, to be debated on Tuesday.

The Irish leader is due to play a major role in the December 14-15 EU summit on Brexit, telling fellow European leaders whether Dublin believes sufficient progress has been made on the future border between EU-member Ireland and Britain’s province of Northern Ireland.

The government has said enough progress has not been made to date. REUTERS