Ireland’s course to the election was cleared on Thursday when lawmakers in the Dail approved a finance bill that included elements of the Cowen government’s austerity package that had not previously been approved, including income tax increases for the country’s two million-strong work force, up to an effective rate of 41 percent for many middle-income earners. Parliament had previously approved steep cuts in the minimum wage, welfare benefits and cabinet ministers’ salaries, an increase in school fees, and a raising of the state pension age.

Until almost the end of parliamentary debate on Thursday night, there were doubts that the finance bill would pass. That it did was thanks to a last-minute concession by the Cowen government; it accepted an amendment that would impose a 90 percent tax on bonuses paid to the employees of any of the Irish banks that turned to the government for state guarantees running into the tens of billions of dollars after a bank-fueled property boom collapsed. It was the property boom that underpinned Ireland’s rise to one of Europe’s richest economies from the mid-1990s, and its collapse precipitated the economic crisis that necessitated the bailout.

The Cowen government had proposed but quickly dropped the 90 percent tax in December, after the Anglo-Irish bank, beneficiary of a $5 billion taxpayer bailout, announced that it intended to pay out more than $50 million in bonuses to more than 2,000 of its employees.

Irish political commentators have predicted a sweeping win in the election for two opposition parties expected to govern in a coalition, the right-of-center Fine Gael party and the left-of-center Labour Party. The favorite to succeed Mr. Cowen as prime minister is the Fine Gael leader, Enda Kenny. The two opposition parties have talked of a possible attempt to renegotiate the terms of the international bailout if they come to power, with some hard-liners suggesting that Ireland should play a doomsday card, threatening to default on its international bank debts if the bailout’s terms are not eased. But with nearly $7 billion of the bailout money already feeding its way into Irish finances, European officials have said that no renegotiation will be accepted.

For Mr. Cowen, 51, the last weeks in government have been tumultuous, culminating last weekend in his being forced by disintegrating support within Fianna Fail to abandon his bid to hang on as party leader, and to lead it into an election.