Ireland is voting Friday in a parliamentary election that will decide the next government — and will show whether Ireland bucks the global trend of incumbents being ousted by disgruntled voters after years of pandemic, international instability and cost-of-living pressures.

Polls opened at 7 a.m.. (0700GMT), and Ireland’s 3.8 million voters are selecting 174 lawmakers to sit in the Dail, the lower house of parliament.

2,000-YEAR-OLD FIG UNEARTHED IN IRELAND MARKS ‘OLDEST EXAMPLE OF AN EXOTIC FRUIT’ DISCOVERED IN THE AREA

Here’s a look at the parties, the issues and the likely outcome.

Who’s running?

The outgoing government was led by the two parties who have dominated Irish politics for the past century: Fine Gael and Fianna Fail. They have similar center-right policies but are longtime rivals with origins on opposing sides of Ireland’s 1920s civil war.

After the 2020 election ended in a virtual dead heat they formed a coalition, agreeing to share Cabinet posts and take turns as taoiseach, or prime minister. Fianna Fail leader Micheál Martin served as premier for the first half of the term and was replaced by Fine Gael’s Leo Varadkar in December 2022. Varadkar unexpectedly stepped down in March, passing the job to current Taoiseach Simon Harris.

Opposition party Sinn Fein achieved a stunning breakthrough in the 2020 election, topping the popular vote, but was shut out of government because Fianna Fail and Fine Gael refused to work with it, citing its leftist policies and historic ties with militant group the Irish Republican Army during three decades of violence in Northern Ireland.

Under Ireland’s system of proportional representation, each of the 43 constituencies elects multiple lawmakers, with voters ranking their preferences. That makes it relatively easy for smaller parties and independent candidates with a strong local following to gain seats.

This election includes a large crop of independent candidates, ranging from local campaigners to far-right activists and reputed crime boss Gerry “the Monk” Hutch.

What are the main issues?

As in many other countries, the cost of living — especially housing — has dominated the campaign. Ireland has an acute housing shortage, the legacy of failing to build enough new homes during the country’s “Celtic Tiger” boom years and the economic slump that followed the 2008 global financial crisis.

“There was not building during the crisis, and when the crisis receded, offices and hotels were built first,” said John-Mark McCafferty, chief executive of housing and homelessness charity Threshold.

The result is soaring house prices, rising rents and growing homelessness.

After a decade of economic growth, McCafferty said “Ireland has resources” — not least 13 billion euros ($13.6 billion) in back taxes the European Union has ordered Apple to pay it — “but it is trying to address big historic infrastructural deficits.”

Tangled up with the housing issue is immigration, a fairly recent challenge to a country long defined by emigration. Recent arrivals include more than 100,000 Ukrainians displaced by war and thousands of people fleeing poverty and conflict in the Middle East and Africa.

This country of 5.4 million has struggled to house all the asylum-seekers, leading to tent camps and makeshift accommodation centers that have attracted tension and protests. A stabbing attack on children outside a Dublin school a year ago, in which an Algerian man has been charged, sparked the worst rioting Ireland had seen in decades.

Unlike many European countries, Ireland does not have a significant far-right party, but far-right voices on social media seek to drum up hostility to migrants, and anti-immigrant independent candidates are hoping for election in several districts. The issue appears to be hitting support for Sinn Fein, as working-class supporters bristled at its pro-immigration policies.

What’s the likely outcome?

Opinion polls suggest voters’ support is split into five roughly even chunks — for Fine Gael, Fianna Fail, Sinn Fein, several smaller parties and an assortment of independents.

Fine Gael has run a gaffe-prone campaign, Fianna Fail has remained steady in the polls and Sinn Fein says it has momentum, but is unlikely to win power unless the other parties drop their opposition to working with it.

Analysts say the most likely outcome is another Fine Gael-Fianna Fail coalition, possibly with a smaller party or a clutch of independents as kingmakers.

“It’s just a question of which minor group is going to be the group that supports the government this time,” said Eoin O’Malley, a political scientist at Dublin City University. “Coalition-forming is about putting a hue on what is essentially the same middle-of-the-road government every time.”

When will we know the results?

Polls close Friday at 10 p.m. (2200GMT), when an exit poll will give the first hints about the result. Counting ballots begins on Saturday morning. Full results could take several days, and forming a government days or weeks after that.

Harris, who cast his vote in Delgany, south of Dublin, said Irish voters and politicians have “got a long few days ahead of us.”

“Isn’t it the beauty and the complexity of our system that when the clock strikes 10 o’clock tonight, there’ll be an exit poll but that won’t even tell us the outcome of the election,” he said.

Medics say an Israeli drone strike killed Ahmed al-Kahlout, head of the Intensive Care Unit at Kamal Adwan Hospital.

At least 42 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks across Gaza, according to medical sources.

Twenty-four people were killed in Israeli strikes on central Gaza’s Nuseirat, one of the enclave’s eight longstanding refugee camps, sources told Al Jazeera on Friday.

An Israeli air strike killed at least 10 Palestinians in a house in Beit Lahiya in the northern Gaza Strip on Friday, medics said.

Others were killed in the northern and southern areas of the enclave, medics added.

The Israeli military on Thursday said its forces were continuing to “strike terror targets as part of the operational activity in the Gaza Strip”.

Israeli tanks had entered northern and western areas of Nuseirat on Thursday.

Some tanks withdrew from northern areas on Friday but remained active in western parts of the camp, the Reuters news agency reported.

The Palestinian Civil Defence said teams were unable to respond to distress calls from residents trapped in their homes.

Dozens of displaced Palestinians returned on Friday to areas where the army had retreated to check on damage to their homes. Medics and relatives covered up dead bodies, including of women, that lay on the road with blankets or white shrouds and carried them away on stretchers.

Medics said an Israeli drone strike killed Ahmed al-Kahlout, head of the Intensive Care Unit at Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahiya, on the northern edge of Gaza, where the Israeli ground forces have been operating since early October.

Kamal Adwan Hospital is one of three medical facilities on the northern edge of Gaza that barely function now due to shortages of medical, fuel, and food supplies.

Most of its medical staff have been detained or expelled by the Israeli army, health officials say.

The Israeli army said its forces operating in Beit Lahiya, Beit Hanoon and Jabalia since October 5 aimed to prevent Hamas fighters from regrouping and waging attacks from those areas.

Residents have accused the army of depopulating the towns of Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoon as well as the Jabalia refugee camp.

Three killed in bakery stampede

Separately, two children and a woman were crushed to death on Friday as a crowd of Palestinians pushed to get bread at a bakery in Gaza amid a worsening food crisis in the war-ravaged territory, according to medics in Gaza.

The bodies of two girls aged 13 and 17 and a 50-year-old woman were taken to the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir el-Balah in central Gaza, where a doctor confirmed that they died from suffocation due to crowding at the al-Banna bakery.

Meanwhile, Israeli authorities released about 30 Palestinians whom it had detained in the past few months during its Gaza offensive.

Those released arrived at a hospital in southern Gaza for medical checkups, medics said.

Freed Palestinians, detained during the war, have complained of ill-treatment and torture in Israeli detention after they were released. Israel denies torture.

Months of efforts to negotiate a ceasefire in Gaza have yielded scant progress, and negotiations are now on hold.

A ceasefire in the conflict between Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah, an ally of Hamas, took effect before dawn on Wednesday, bringing a halt to hostilities that had escalated sharply in recent months and had overshadowed the Gaza conflict.

Israel’s assault on Gaza has killed at least 44,363 people, mostly women and children, since October 2023, according to Palestinian health officials.

Israel launched its war on Gaza after Hamas led an attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023, killing at least 1,139 people and seizing approximately 250 others as captives.