DUBLIN (Reuters) – Talks between Ireland’s two historically dominant centre-right parties and independent lawmakers have reached agreement that will give a new coalition government a “comfortable majority,” a negotiator for one of the parties said on Wednesday.
Fianna Fail and Fine Gael, who were the largest parties in the outgoing coalition, have been in talks since they fell just one seat short in a Nov. 29 election of the 87 needed to govern.
“There’s group of nine independents now … and that brings us up to 95, so we’ve a comfortable majority,” Fianna Fail lawmaker James Lawless, one of the party’s negotiators, told RTE radio.
A draft programme for government will be distributed later on Wednesday to the lawmakers who have agreed to back the new government, he said.
(Reporting by by Conor Humphries and Padraic Halpin; Editing by Peter Graff)
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