80% of Irish want bailout renegotiated: poll

(DUBLIN) - An overwhelming majority of Irish voters want the terms of a 67.5 billion euro ($92 billion) EU-IMF bailout renegotiated, according to an opinion poll out Sunday.

The terms of the deal have become an election issue with Fine Gael main opposition leader Enda Kenny travelling to Brussels on Friday to tell European Commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso that he would be seeking changes in the deal if, as expected, he becomes prime minister after the forthcoming election.

A MillwardBrown Lansdowne poll in the Sunday Independent newspaper found 82 percent want a renegotiation of the bailout forced on embattled Prime Minister Brian Cowen last November.

The broadsheet says the public "are clearly outraged" that the European Union funds are being lent to Ireland on a much higher interest rate than the bloc itself is borrowing it for, and are demanding that an incoming government set about amending the terms.

Some 11 percent of those polled said the next government shouldn't attempt to renegotiate the deal.

Despite the big majority for the next government to seek a renegotiation some 52 percent said such attempts were either quite unlikely or very unlikely to succeed.

The poll and a similar Red C survey in The Sunday Business Post newspaper both show Cowen's Fianna Fail -- long the Irish republic's traditional party of government -- heading for its worst ever electoral defeat.

Both polls show the party far behind the expected next government, a coalition involving Fine Gael and the Labour party.

Both polls involved interviews with some 1,000 voters last Wednesday and Thursday.