Irish government support slumps in Dublin by-election

"I regret I don't think that Fianna Fail understand the scale of the problem in housing yet and we have to," Jim O'Callaghan told journalists.

Support for the party of Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin collapsed to under 5% in a parliamentary by-election and his coalition partners both suffered significant setbacks, deserted by voters angry about soaring housing costs. Ivana Bacik, of the small centre-left opposition Labour party, looked set to win the Dublin Bay South seat, incomplete results showed on Friday, following a campaign focused on a housing crisis that has seen rents and house prices double in a decade.

The Fine Gael party of Deputy Prime Minister Leo Varadkar, which held what it views as a stronghold seat before one of its lawmakers resigned, looked set to come in second, with the dominant left-wing opposition party Sinn Fein third. The other party in the governing three-way coalition, the Green Party, saw its proportion of first preference votes in the constituency fall to 8% from 22% at an election a year ago.

The director of election of Martin's Fianna Fail party, which secured 14% of first preference votes there in February 2020, called for a more radical approach to housing policy to stem the collapse in support for the party registered in recent opinion polls. "I regret I don't think that Fianna Fail understand the scale of the problem in housing yet and we have to," Jim O'Callaghan told journalists.