1981 Irish general election


The 1981 Irish general election was held on Thursday, 11 June, three weeks after the dissolution of the Dáil on 21 May. The newly elected 166 members of the 22nd Dáil assembled at Leinster House on 30 June when a new Taoiseach and government were appointed.
The general election took place in 41 parliamentary constituencies throughout Ireland for 166 seats in the lower house of parliament, Dáil Éireann. The number of seats in the Dáil was increased by 18 from 148 to 166.

Campaign

The general election of 1981 was the first one of five during the 1980s. The election also saw three new leaders of the three main parties fight their first general election. Charles Haughey had become Taoiseach and leader of Fianna Fáil at the end of 1979, Garret FitzGerald was the new leader of Fine Gael and Frank Cluskey was in charge of the Labour Party.
Haughey and Fianna Fáil seemed extremely popular with the electorate in early 1981. He was expected to call the election at the time of the Fianna Fáil ardfheis on 14 February, but the Stardust fire caused the ardfheis to be postponed, and the Republican hunger strike in the Maze Prison began in March. By the dissolution in May, much of the earlier optimism in the party had filtered out. The Anti H-Block movement fielded abstentionist candidates in solidarity with the hunger strikers, undermining the Republican credentials of Fianna Fáil.
Fianna Fáil's manifesto promised the electorate more spending programmes and Fine Gael put forward a series of tax-cutting plans.

Result

Voting summary

Seats summary

Dáil membership changes

The following changes took place as a result of the election:
Where more than one change took place in a constituency the concept of successor is an approximation for presentation only.
Where a number of related constituency changes took place in an area, such as Cork, the outgoing constituency for retiring TDs and the allocation of new seats are approximations for presentation only.
Outgoing TDs re-elected in a new constituency, with no related changes, are not recorded as a change