Northern Ireland's DUP secures eight seats, eyes some influence

By Ian Graham BELFAST (Reuters) - Northern Ireland's Democratic Unionist Party retained eight seats in Britain's parliament on Friday and said it could still wield some influence even if it is not the "dream" outcome of holding the balance of power. Prime Minister David Cameron's Conservatives are set to return to power after an unexpectedly strong showing and may be poised to secure a parliamentary majority, a BBC projection showed on Friday with more than 90 percent of results declared. The British nationalist DUP has said it would consider supporting a minority government in exchange for a package of financial and political concessions but may have lost that opportunity. "David Cameron is a smart guy, he'll be looking for a bit of a cushion and maybe there'll still be an opportunity for the DUP to play a role," Northern Ireland's finance minister and DUP member Simon Hamilton told BBC. "It's a different sort of influence. It's not what might have been the possibility had they been 10 or so seats short of a majority but there will still be a situation where they will want to have a degree of comfort, a degree of wiggle room and there will still be opportunities for the DUP to play a role." One DUP MP had earlier raised the prospect of a "dream" scenario when an exit poll put the Conservatives seven seats short of the 323 analysts say are needed for a working majority. DUP leader Peter Robinson told reporters he would travel to London for World War Two victory celebrations on Friday and expected to talk to parliamentary colleagues there. He said "no serious negotiations" had yet taken place. DUP rival the Ulster Unionist Party, another potential partner for the Conservatives, secured two seats, while Labour ally the SDLP won three. Irish nationalist party Sinn Fein, whose policy of abstaining its seats cuts the number of seats needed to secure a parliamentary majority, won four seats, down from five in the last parliament. Before the election the DUP produced a wish list of 100 measures and one of its lawmakers said it would seek up to 1 billion pounds in additional funding for the province. Some Catholic Irish nationalists voiced concerns that the entry into government by the mainly Protestant DUP could unsettle Northern Ireland's delicate power-sharing administration, part of a 1998 peace deal that ended three decades of sectarian violence. The DUP's deeply conservative social policies and opposition to gay rights could also disconcert some English voters. (Writing by Conor Humphries. Additional reporting by Padraic Halpin, editing by Mike Peacock)