After decades of political irrelevance in the Republic of Ireland, Sinn Fein is poised to emerge from the shadow of the gunman and become a government “kingmaker” when voters go to the polls in a week’s time.

Gerry Adams, the Sinn Fein president, said at the party’s manifesto launch in Dublin yesterday that it was the only real alternative in this general election. “We are ready for government, North and South,” he said.

The party is already in charge of Northern Ireland, on a power-sharing basis with Ian Paisley’s Democratic Unionist Party. Mr Adams is now hoping for an electoral bounce in the South from last week’s images of his colleague Martin McGuinness, the Northern Ireland Deputy First Minister, smiling broadly with Mr Paisley at Stormont.

While his remarks yesterday may have been open to interpretation as partitionist, the Sinn Fein leader continues to demonstrate his agility when it comes to making ambiguous forecasts.

“We have a vision and a plan for a prosperous country in which wealth is shared and where the promise of equal rights and equal opportunities is fulfilled for each and every person who lives on our island,” he said.

It has been a slow journey from pariah status as the political wing of the Provisional IRA to a left-wing — and rapidly moving to the centre — party but Sinn Fein now appears to be riding the wave of goodwill created by the Stormont celebrations.

Latest opinion polls show support up from 7 to 10 per cent. Translated into seats in the Dail, the 166-member Irish parliament, that would give Sinn Fein ten or more deputies, making it a natural coalition candidate for Bertie Ahern’s Fianna Fail. Mr Ahern, the Prime Minister, is faltering under salvoes of opposition criticism over allegations about his past finances. Under the Republic’s single transferable vote system coalition government has become the norm.

Mr Ahern recently ruled out a coalition government with Sinn Fein because he claimed their policies would destroy the Republic’s booming economy.

Nevertheless, Sinn Fein has been swiftly rolling back its demands for higher taxation and most pundits believe that a Fianna Fail-Sinn Fein coalition cannot be ruled out. Asked about the Taoiseach’s refusal to share power with Sinn Fein, Mr Adams said yesterday: “Ian Paisley used to say the same thing.”

On the prospect of going into government, Mr Adams said: “We don’t want to see Sinn Fein bums on ministerial seats just for the craic [meaning for the fun of it].” Sinn Fein is running a candidate in each of the Republic’s 41 constituencies, with one extra party hopeful in Dublin South. It currently has five seats.

But the party’s hunger for power and its new pragmatism — after ditching so many of its sacred cows on Irish reunification — was further demonstrated yesterday when Mr Adams announced it had dropped plans to change personal and corporate taxes. Current levels were now “sufficient” to pay for improvements in public services, he said. The party hopes to pick up votes from both Fianna Fail and Labour in working-class areas.

It is poised to benefit from proportional representation because it tends to favour smaller parties by denying victory to a single victor in a first-past-the-post system.

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