Ireland gears up for general election

Ireland’s political parties are continuing to campaign ahead of a general election on Friday. An opinion poll released Tuesday showed that Ireland's main opposition party Fine Gael has extended its lead but looks likely to fall short of an overall majority.

Friday's election is the first in Europe to be dominated by the debt crisis and the ruling Fianna Fail party is expected to suffer heavy losses at the polls.

"There's obviously a certain amount of public anger, but it's not on the scale that we have seen in lets say Greece or some of the Baltic states where there was actual rioting and some people even got killed", says David Quinn, a columnist with the Irish Catholic newspaper about the political climate ahead of the vote.

But he adds there is "a certain amount of hope I suppose that the new government coming might be able to make a difference." Here Lydia O'Kane's interview with David Quinn here