When French President Emmanuel Macron met Taoiseach Micheál Martin at the EU Council summit over the past two days, he might have asked him for advice on confidence and supply agreements, government coalitions between former political foes and all the attached subtleties of managing a hung parliament. This is the way Ireland has been run for the past six years, and on several occasions before that. But the legislative poll that concluded France’s latest electoral cycle last Sunday was the first to leave the elected president without a parliamentary majority since the Fifth Republic regime was established in its presidential…

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