FG briefing:Fine Gael could expect to gain at least 20 seats in the next Dáil, the party's director of elections, Frank Flannery, said at a press conference in Dublin yesterday.
He predicted a drop in Fianna Fáil seats from the present figure of 80, saying: "I would give them a range of 60 to 66."
Fine Gael's total would range between 52 and 58, up from the present figure of 32.
"Labour will range somewhere from 22 to 26." If Labour leader Pat Rabbitte's prediction of 33 seats was fulfilled, "there will be a two-party alternative government, that's for sure".
He expected the Green Party to come in "close to double figures, perhaps nine", with Sinn Féin at a similar level.
"The Progressive Democrats may very well survive and have some people back in the House, we'll have to wait and see. But it would be considerably less than they have now."
The number of Independents - currently 14 - would probably be halved. "Based on the national polling data," Mr Flannery said, "this is the likely outcome of this election now."
He was assuming that Fianna Fáil would get 36 or 37 per cent of the vote. Based on the trend in recent opinion polls, Fine Gael would "hit around 28 per cent".
Fine Gael's director of communications, Ciarán Conlon, strongly denied that there was a strategy to confine news conferences in election headquarters to party officials rather than the leader or members of the front bench.
"We'll have frontbenchers joining us tomorrow and the following day. We will have set-piece events here for our manifesto and other events. We're determined to have a campaign that is not desk-based. We're determined to have a campaign that's mobile, energetic, colourful, a lot of visuals. We're trying to take the campaign out on to the road and not necessarily have as much in here as happened previously," Mr Conlon said.
Mr Flannery added: "Policies and everything like that are the software of the election; the hardware really, at the end of the day, is votes."
