Irish premier Simon Harris has said Fine Gael will gain seats in the General Election despite a further fragmentation of Irish politics.
Fine Gael won 35 seats in the 2020 election, but 18 of those TDs did not seek re-election in Friday’s poll.
An exit poll puts the party’s support at 21%, a fraction of a percentage behind the main opposition party Sinn Fein.
Mr Harris, the outgoing Taoiseach, was elected with 16,869 first preference votes, well above the quota.
He celebrated with his wife Caoimhe, his parents Bart and Mary, his sister Gemma and his political team at the count centre in Greystones, Co Wicklow.
Ahead of his re-election, Mr Harris told reporters he was “cautiously optimistic” about the election result and said it was “clear that my party will gain seats”.
“It’s also clear that Fine Gael will top the poll in at least 10 constituencies, many more than we did the last time, that we will gain seats in constituencies where we haven’t had seats in many years, like Tipperary South and Waterford, and that we will add second seats in other constituencies as well,” he said.
“I think the people of Ireland have now spoken. We now have to work out exactly what they have said, and that is going to take a little bit of time.”
Simon Harris is hugged by his wife after being re-elected (Niall Carson/PA)
In one of the five consecutive broadcast media rounds he did from the Greystones count centre, he said there were a lot of areas where there were “straight shoot-outs” between Fianna Fail and Fine Gael for final seats.
He described the Sinn Fein vote as “pretty significantly down”, the Fianna Fail vote as “marginally down” and the Fine Gael vote as “static” compared with its 2020 vote.
He said it was “a very close, a very competitive election” and that “we haven’t seen a Sinn Fein surge or anything like it”.
He said: “It was predicted by many that I would become the Taoiseach for a brief period of time, take over from Leo Varadkar, and then have to rebuild my party from the opposition benches as Sinn Fein led a government.
“We don’t know what’s going to happen on government formation yet, but that is now looking less likely than it was.”
He acknowledged that it was “a very difficult day” for the Green Party and paid tribute to their work in the coalition government, alongside his party and Fianna Fail.
“Definitely, politics in Ireland has gotten much more fragmented,” he said.
Fine Gael minister Helen McEntee said that her party’s campaign had been “positive”.
“The feeling on the doors was very much that people were relatively happy with the government,” she said on RTE Radio.
“It will come down to the last seats and it will come down to transfers,” she said of the final result, adding that Fianna Fail and Fine Gael were performing better than the exit poll estimated.