The election of an Independent candidate, Mr Seamus Healy, the strong showing by Fine Gael and the collapse in support for Fianna Fail were the main features of yesterday's result in the Tipperary South by-election.
In the long term, however, the biggest loser may have been the Labour Party, which lost the seat it regarded as its own and is no longer the dominant left-wing force in the constituency.
It was a day of major surprises. Mr Healy, leader of the Clonmel-based Workers' and Unemployed Action Group, was expected to do well but nobody predicted he would top the poll.
That honour was expected to belong to Fianna Fail's Mr Barry O'Brien, who instead came third as the party dropped by 14.5 percentage points in its share of the vote.
The Fianna Fail director of elections, locally-based Minister of State Mr Noel Davern, said external factors, such as the Hugh O'Flaherty affair, had undermined Mr O'Brien's chances. He also blamed elements within the party who were unhappy with Mr O'Brien's nomination.
He stressed that both of the defeated candidates at the party's selection convention, Mr Michael Maguire and Mr Michael Anglim, had campaigned vigorously. However, the failure of others to make themselves available had cost the party up to 5 per cent of its potential vote.
He also said Mr O'Brien's lower profile compared to the other main candidates had been a factor.
Fine Gael activists were thrilled by the performance of Senator Tom Hayes, who started the race, according to the general consensus, in fourth position and came close to taking the seat.
The party leader, Mr John Bruton, the subject of pre-election speculation about his position, admitted he was relieved.
"I wouldn't ever be too attentive to anonymous people who are only prepared to speak off the record and I would counsel people in the journalistic profession to pay the same level of attention to people who are not willing to put their names beside what they're saying.
"But of course I'm very happy and if you have all that sort of stuff in the papers, it does have some effect on you. It would be foolish to think you can ignore the sort of sustained media speculation and comment, that you can just wipe it out of your mind. To come along and get a result against all that background of negativity is even better."
Mrs Ellen Ferris, who began the campaign as favourite but was among the first candidates to be eliminated, claimed the election had helped to galvanise the Labour Party organisation in Tipperary South.
She pointed out that the party had recorded a slight increase in its vote since the 1997 general election, when the seat was won by her late husband, Mr Michael Ferris.
The party is in deep trouble in the constituency, however. Its vote collapsed in 1998's local election, leaving it with just one representative on Tipperary South County Council.
Mr Healy's group, by contrast, has four seats of the 12 on Clonmel Corporation and two on the county authority. He said he would use this strength to put pressure on the Government to deliver more jobs to the constituency and would not sign up to a pact with any sitting government.
To loud cheers from his supporters, he said the result had delivered a message to the Government. The first lesson was that it was time the scandals stopped and the system was "cleaned up".
The second was that jobs must be provided in towns in the constituency where the unemployment rate was "three or four times the national average".
The only Cabinet Minister present, Mrs O'Rourke, said Fianna Fail would be having "a good, close look" at itself before the next general election.
Mr Healy's supporters had been in confident mood since Thursday night when it emerged there had been a strong turnout in working-class areas of Clonmel. He led Mr Hayes by nearly 1,300 votes on the first count.
The Fine Gael man needed most of Mrs Ferris's transfers if he was to overhaul his opponent, but fell short of what he required. There was then the rare spectacle of Fianna Fail transfers deciding a by-election. In the end, these broke evenly between the two front-runners, an outcome which saw Mr Healy home with more than 500 votes to spare.
