Only 4% favoured a Fianna Fail/Green option.

A difference of 60 votes in Tipperary South, where Fianna Fail's Martin Mansergh just about won a seat, and seventy votes in Dublin South Central, where Labour's Eric Byrne narrowly lost out, would have reduced the gap in seats to just one, 79 for PD/Fianna Fail and 78 for the Rainbow. If Beverley Flynn is declared bankrupt and loses her entitlement to be a TD, Fine Gael will win the subsequent by-election in Mayo.

The figures then will be 80 against 78.

These numbers and percentages . . . some of them admittedly in the 'what if ' category . . . hardly suggest that the election result gives the Taoiseach an overwhelming mandate to form the next goverment. He is in the driving seat, surely, but by those figures and on that performance, Enda Kenny is entitled to have a go at putting together a coalition as well. If the PDs can aspire to government with two seats, then Kenny . . . his party having risen from the political ashes . . . can credibly argue his entitlement to lead the next administration. (By any measure, he is entitled to be listened to as he explains how he might hold a four party coalition . . . plus independents . . . together.

That level of basic respect, I suspect, was behind Mary Harney's decision to slap down Tom Parlon on Thursday after he had all but ruled out a PD coalition with Fine Gael. Harney, through a spokesman, reminded Parlon that she had been mandated to decide the best course of action for her party in terms of forming a government. "She has not ruled anything in or out", the PD spokesman said. ) Whatever your view of Kenny's policies, there is no question that his performance was by some distance the best of the election. All other things being equal, to take a party that was on life support five years ago, which was being written off everywhere, this column included, and to bring it to the verge of power by dint of sheer determination, hard work and a bloody-minded desire for change, was an enormous achievement.

All things weren't equal, of course, which puts Kenny's performance in an even better light.

For the entire campaign, he had the best selling newspaper in the country working against him, slavishly and unquestioningly supporting his opponent. Much more importantly, however, the Taoiseach received enormous favours from RTE at vital points in the campaign.

The conduct of RTE in the course of the campaign is worth addressing. At newsroom level, the station played a blinder with David Davin-Power, David McCullagh and Brian Dowling being rigidly and impressively even-handed all the way through. (McCullagh gets an extra star for keeping his wits about him on the night he did a live report from Merrion Street with several demented tourists jumping around behind him).

But elsewhere, the station abandoned any pretence at achieving balance. Before the election was called, there was the whole Frank Luntz fiasco, in which an unashamed cheerleader for the Taoiseach was given three separate editions of The Week In Politics to puff up his new hero. Luntz seems to have a major downer on Enda Kenny and an addiction to the idea of a Fianna Fail/Labour coalition which, he did his best to prove, was what the Irish people really wanted.

Though the election results and the exit poll highlighted the vacuity of both his methods and his conclusions (the Irish people responded positively to Enda Kenny; they have no interest in FF/Labour), Luntz still seems to have the respect of senior people in RTE and was used during the coverage of the count last weekend.

He was in the RDS, where six Dublin counts were conducted, in the company of an RTE producer.

He may be inflicted on us again.

Other RTE coverage was even more scandalous. The Late Late Show on the Friday before the election featured a discussion between Eoghan Harris, Eamon Dunphy and John Waters which, despite Dunphy's best efforts to inject the balance RTE bosses couldn't be bothered with, became a 30 minute tribute to Bertie Ahern.

It could never have been anything else. Waters's views on this subject are well-known, and Eoghan Harris has long ago lost possession of whatever critical faculties he had in the first place. Though it was entertaining television, it was a shameful abandonment by RTE of its obligations to be fair and balanced.

Right across the station, a mood existed to protect the Taoiseach. On Radio 1's This Week on the Sunday before the election, Ahern and Kenny were interviewed. The Taoiseach, questioned first, received a relatively soft ride from Gerald Barry, which barely touched on detailed policy matters. Kenny, by contrast, was pursued vigorously on policy by Gavin Jennings and was in defensive mode for almost the entire interview. This is as it should be, of course, but in the interests of balance, both leaders should have been interviewed by the same person and in the same style, whether that style be vigorous or vapid. On that Sunday, the Taoiseach was indulged, the Fine Gael leader interrogated.

A few days later, Bryan Dobson expertly took Fianna Fail policy apart in an interview with the Taoiseach on Six-One and exposed Ahern's lack of command of his own manifesto as ruthlessly as Ahern had done with Kenny in the leaders' debate. Many thousands of people, travelling home from work, missed that interview and would have welcomed a chance to see it on the nine o'clock news. But there wasn't a sign of it. In RTE, apparently, you can't embarrass Bertie Ahern twice in the same evening.