Ireland's next ruling coalition will include a strong centre-left member in the Labour party but it will be leftist with a small "l", posing little danger to Dublin's commitment to fiscal austerity and debt repayment.
The centre-right Fine Gael party and Labour are expected to win a March 11 election and implement a three-year EU/IMF programme bailing Ireland out of its worst economic crisis since the Great Famine of the 19th century.
Traditional bedfellows, Labour will likely have a bigger say than usual and may be given the finance portfolio. But the fiscally conservative Fine Gael party will still dominate given that it runs nearly twice as many candidates in the election and has always had a far bigger support base.
Labour has its roots as the political wing of the trade union movement and its leader is a former trade union official who organised marches for tax reform in the late 1970s.
But unlike the smaller and more radical Sinn Fein party, Labour rarely takes its members to the streets and has played an important role in the traditional consensual politics in Ireland which have never been run along ideological lines.
It has also signed up to the EU/IMF goals and believes Ireland's austerity drive must continue until its budget deficit drops below 3 percent of GDP by the EU-set target of 2015.
Labour favours taxing the rich, but it was a Labour finance minister who first introduced Ireland's ultra low corporation tax, now a key plank of the country's recovery plan and a bone of contention with some of Ireland's new European creditors.
Such conciliatory views in the past have seen Labour buddy up with Fine Gael on all bar one occasion when it has entered government. Fine Gael's previous six terms in charge have always been with the help of Labour.
"They worked well together in the past in strong, secure coalitions and there are good signs already of convergence in some policy areas like political reform and health," said David Farrell, professor of politics at University College Dublin.
UNPOPULAR DECISIONS AHEAD
As Britain's similarly resurgent third party the Liberal Democrats will testify, however, coalition government is by its very nature a constant struggle.
Labour will also be under pressure from Sinn Fein, which according to opinion polls could pick up a record 12 seats amid voter anger over the crisis and will take pleasure in rubbishing Labour's leftwing credentials.
Ireland's next coalition will have to reach a compromise on a number of key areas, principally on Fine Gael plans to make two-thirds of budgetary adjustments through spending cuts and Labour's wish for a more even split with taxation.
Fine Gael's proposals for public sector job cuts are also far more reaching, seeking up to 30,000 over the next four years compared to the 15,000 of natural wastage Labour favour.
A compromise down the middle on that point would in fact see both parties arrive at the government's current figure of some 22,000.
"The two parties will have to find a compromise, and the chances are that this middle way will not look hugely different from the approach being taken by the current government," Michael Gallagher, politics professor at Trinity College Dublin, wrote in a blog. "It might not be long before many members of both parties begin asking why they should incur such unpopularity for policies to which at bottom they do not feel any attachment."
The difficulties and tensions presented by compromise have led to governments in Ireland — almost always made up of two or more parties — rarely lasting their full five-year terms, on average coming unstuck in their fourth year.
Indeed Fine Gael and Labour have never managed to spend as much as five years in each other's company, and famously in 1982 became the first and still only government to fall because it was unable to vote its budget through parliament.
A likely big majority this time — the two parties could conceivably command an unprecedented 110 of the lower-houses 166 seats — will stop a handful or two of dissenting voices from bringing the government to a premature end.
However with a term of austerity budgets and unpopular decisions ahead, and a likely sizable hard left opposition sniping at them, a Labour party campaigning on bringing "real change" may find it hard to last the pace.
