McDowell is crushed in the big 'squeeze'

On the airwaves:To an extent the drama ended at 7am. Morning Ireland announced the results of RTÉ's exit poll, and all the pre-election predictions were shown the door.

The "closest election in decades" turned out to be nothing of the sort and the knife-edge drama of the count was largely blunted. By late morning, Ivan Yates appeared on Today with Pat Kenny and declared immediately: "This election is over."

"You're telling our listeners to switch off," exclaimed Kenny. "Stay with us!"

For a few hours, it was all about tallies, some talk about tallies, and then another look at the tallies. But there was a clear idea that Fianna Fáil was running away with it.

By lunchtime commentators had even dragged back the words "overall majority" from whatever corner they had been hiding during the campaign.

The result, according to Yates, was down to the "the breakfast roll vote" - urban, working males, who decided that the economy was in too delicate a condition to hand over to a new government.

Gradually, a consensus grew that the smaller parties had been "squeezed" by the larger parties. For a while in mid-afternoon, you couldn't turn on the television or radio without hearing someone talk about a party being squeezed here or a candidate squeezed there.

It became an orange juice election, to go with the breakfast roll vote. As the afternoon wore on, the pace of results picked up so that the coverage was punctuated with whoops and yee-has and the sight of a winning candidate treating supporters' shoulders like a bucking bronco.

RTÉ's radio coverage was more reactive than that on television, but the race to a count centre often ended in silence or a fizzling microphone. "The gremlins have got in again," said Seán O'Rourke, and anyone half-listening might have wondered which constituency that party was running in.

On television, coverage lurched from the studio to sometimes chaotic count centres. Mark Little tried not to get clobbered by the giant computerised bar chart, while Bryan Dobson, Miriam O'Callaghan and John Bowman asked commentators to put a shape on developments.

Among them was PJ Mara, lapping up victory in what he confirmed was his last election. "You won't have me to kick around anymore," he said with a sly grin that suggested he's always been more kicker than kicked.

Fianna Fáil minister after minister romped home. When Willie O'Dea won with a massive majority, his smile was so broad it almost popped the moustache from his upper lip.

While Pat Rabbitte looked as if he had the weight of the world on his eyebrows, Enda Kenny described Fine Gael's performance as "phenomenal".

But one leader had nothing to grasp. Early in the evening Mary Harney had declared her optimism that PD leader Michael McDowell would pull through.

But this had been the last sting of a dying wasp. McDowell announced his retirement from politics amid a crush of microphones and flashbulbs as the RTÉ cameraman jostled for a view. And finally we had been given our moment of true drama.