A STEADY turnout was reported at polling stations across the Republic yesterday in one of the most unpredictable elections of recent years.
As the electorate increasingly turns away from mainstream parties to smaller factions and Independents, a hung parliament is widely predicted.
The counting of votes begins today with the first counts expected in late afternoon.
Earlier, President Michael D Higgins and the Republic's leading politicians cast their votes.
President Higgins visited the polling station near his official residence in Dublin's Phoenix Park yesterday morning.
Outgoing Taoiseach and Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny voted in his home town of Castlebar, Co Mayo, while Tanaiste Joan Burton, leader of the Labour Party - Fine Gael's junior partner in the last coalition government - voted in a school on Dublin's Navan Road.
Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin voted in his Cork constituency while Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams cast his ballot in Ravensdale, Co Louth, close to the border.
Such is the voter schism it threatens to blow apart a duopoly enjoyed for more than 80 years by the currently ruling Fine Gael party and the main Opposition party Fianna Fáil.
Bitter rivals since the civil war, the pair may be forced into a historic "grand coalition".
The shift could open a definitive right/left divide in the Dáil for the first time since the foundation of the Republic.
Opinion polls show little chance of the outgoing Fine Gael/Labour coalition being returned to power on their own.
After five years of austerity, Labour would need to defy predictions of big losses at the ballot box to help make up the numbers.
Other possibilities include a minority Fine Gael government, supported by Fianna Fáil, or a rainbow coalition of Fine Gael, Labour and some smaller parties.
Once a clear picture emerges from the weekend counting of votes, the parties will have until March 10 - when the Dáil is scheduled to resume - to forge a power-sharing deal.
The spectre of a second election will loom over any uncertainty.
Despite being the shortest general election campaign in Irish political history, it was a drawn-out, lacklustre three weeks that generally failed to ignite the imagination of the population.
Almost 3.3 million voters are eligible to cast their ballots, among them more than 30,000 who registered in time to vote this month.
More than 550 candidates are fighting in 40 constituencies for just 158 Dail seats.
With eight fewer seats than last time around, the competition will be particularly intense in some constituencies who are down a representative.
Islanders off the coasts of Donegal, Mayo and Galway voted on Thursday to make sure their ballots were back in time for the count.
