Winner: Nobody

"This does not look good to me," mourned Eamon de Valera. With all but five districts accounted for in Eire's general elections (TIME, Feb. 9), Dev's comfortable, 16-year-old majority faded into thin air last week. Only 66 out of a possible 147 seats in the new Dail were taken by his Fianna Fail.

But if Dev had lost the election, at least nobody else had won it. The situation in the 13th Dail promised to be even more confusing than in the 12th. "Clann na Poblachta is a fiasco," crowed the pro Dev Irish Press, as Barrister Sean MacBride's proud new party went down in unexpected humiliation with only ten of its 98 candidates seated. Said MacBride: "I'm disappointed."

Old Fine Gael won 27 new seats, but even Fine Gael was in no mood to boast. Party Leader Richard Mulcahy had kept his seat by the slightest margin. Burly Billy Norton and his Irish Laborites gained six, but their grand total was still only 14. The only real triumph of the whole election was scored by an independent, Dublin's diminutive alderman and onetime Lord Mayor, Alfred Byrne, who refused to do any campaigning at all. On the strength of a newspaper ad proclaiming "Alfie needs a helping hand!" Byrne romped into parliament with 13,066 votes --the third highest figure in the land.

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