Gavan Reilly: It’s all over bar the crafty end-of-term rotating…

The dust didn’t take long to settle but already it feels like the endgame.

Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael sending their negotiating teams into battle, a rather ceremonial battle given the two sides have happily coalesced for the last four years and are content to do so again for another five. Notably, Labour are not in the room from day one – and you’d wonder how Labour are supposed to eventually get their members’ buy-in for an arrangement they didn’t get to negotiate from the off.

A handful of independents will support the big two in Government, and the band plays on. It suits everyone.

Many of the independents are centrist or centre-right; indeed, a few of them are former members of the parties with whom they’re now negotiating. They get their baubles, maybe an expanded Emergency Department for their provincial hospital. The Civil War parties get to retain the bulk of their manifestos, without needing to dilute them at the behest of a smaller party with a different ethos.

Those opposition parties get to hang onto their purity.

Sinn Féin gets to avoid the tough calls of government for another few years, and to start work on building a real cohesion across the left and centre-left so that an alternative government is on the table next time.

Labour get to continue their revival and cultivate new representatives before having to reconsider going into power and suffering the inevitable fate of junior partners.

The Social Democrats get to make household names of their 11 TDs and figure out their points of difference, or alignment, with their Labour cousins. Everyone consolidates. All are happy.

The biggest question therefore is about the composition of the government itself: how many Cabinet seats are taken by each party, whether any independent TDs wrangle a seat for themselves, and the rotation of the Taoiseach’s position.

Despite the ten-seat difference between the two parties, getting another go in the Taoiseach’s chair is a red line issue for Fine Gael, on the premise that there was only a one-point difference in the share of the first preference votes. Grand, says Fianna Fáil.

It’s not worth a falling out over.

The last thing they need is for Fine Gael to performatively collapse the talks, forcing Micheál Martin to make an awkward call to Mary Lou.

So: all that’s left to do is fudge together the two party manifestos, and throw in a few targeted sweeteners for some independents. Job done.

Should Micheál Martin agree to rotate the Taoiseach’s position? Objectively, possibly not.

Share of the popular vote is not what counts – Labour won 11 seats with 4.7%; Aontú won 2 seats with 3.6% – and a 48-38 split is not perfect parity.

But, tactically, I’d do it. It would give Fianna Fáil an opportunity for a mid-term refresh, and leave Simon Harris as the boss in 2029 when his party will be asking for fifth term, and a twentieth consecutive year in government.

That’s a hard sell.

I’d rather him than me.