So the general election of 2016 is finally, finally over. The Labour Party has managed to scrape one last seat in the constituency of Longford-Westmeath following days of recounts and legal threats, thus gaining full speaking rights in the 32nd Dáil and one more TD than it’s new arch nemesis, the AAA-PBP. If anyone saw the repugnant performances of former Labour boss, Pat Rabbitte, on television over the last six days it is obvious how important the latter position was to the routed party he once led. And which he and his entryist colleagues eventually hollowed out and destroyed just as they did with the Workers Party and Democratic Left (not to mention Official Sinn Féin before it became the WP, in the case of some of his older cronies).
By way of review, listed below is the full number of Teachtaí Dála elected to Dáil Éireann in the 2016 general election by party or group affiliation with the seat changes from the pre-election quantities shown in parenthesis. The number of TDanna signed up to the anti-water charges campaign, Right2Change, is indicated by an asterix.
50 = Fine Gael (-26)
44 = Fianna Fáil (+24)
23 = Sinn Féin (+9) *23
7 = Labour Party (-30)
6 = AAA-PBP (+2) *3
6 = Independent Alliance [Not a registered party]
4 = Independents 4 Change (+4) *4
3 = Social Democrats (-/+0)
2 = Green Party (+2)
1 = Workers and Unemployed Action (-/+0) *1
12 = Independents [No party or group affiliation]
AN SIONNACH FIONN 
Small round hard stones click
under my heels,
seeding grasses thrust
bearded seeds
into trouser cuffs, cans,
trodden on, crunch
in tall, purple-flowering,
amiable weeds.
District Six.
No board says it is:
but my feet know,
and my hands,
and the skin about my bones,
and the soft labouring of my lungs,
and the hot, white, inwards turning
anger of my eyes.
Brash with glass,
name flaring like a flag,
it squats
in the grass and weeds,
incipient Port Jackson trees:
new, up-market, haute cuisine,
guard at the gatepost,
whites only inn.
No sign says it is:
but we know where we belong.
I press my nose
to the clear panes, know,
before I see them, there will be
crushed ice white glass,
linen falls,
the single rose.
Down the road,
working man’s cafe sells
bunny chows.
Take it with you, eat
it at a plastic table’s top,
wipe your fingers on your jeans,
spit a little on the floor:
it’s in the bone.
I back from the
glass,
boy again,
leaving small mean O
of small mean mouth.
Hands burn
for a stone, a bomb,
to shiver down the glass.
Nothing’s changed.
Tatemkhulu Afrika
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It’s not the 32nd Dáil. It’s the 30th Royal Oireachtas
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