Year of elections in Ireland brings public concerns into focus

You might have seen that across the world 2024 has been dubbed the Year of Elections. Ireland is no exception: European Parliament and local elections are scheduled for June 7th with the strong possibility of a general election later in the year. June 7th will also see the people of Limerick directly elect their mayor for the first time. Before any of that takes place, though, voters will already have gone to the polls on March 8th to decide on proposals to amend and extend references in the Constitution to women in the home, the role of carers and the definition of the family.

Campaigning officially started this week for those referendums, which will be the first nationwide vote in more than four years. That means hundreds of thousands of young adults under the age of 23 will have the opportunity to exercise their franchise for the first time, along with tens of thousands of new Irish citizens. The country’s rapid population growth is both a measure of success and a challenge to the State’s capacity to meet rising demand for services and infrastructure. These issues will be at the heart of the political battles ahead.

The right to vote is the most fundamental part of our political system, and elections are in one sense a celebration of that. The particular rituals and pageantry of Irish elections – the poster-festooned lampposts, fierce local rivalries, elongated counts – all contribute to the sense of occasion. But a campaign will also bring into focus public concerns over the very serious issues – housing, health, the cost of living, climate change – that will ultimately influence the result. The last four years have seen two massive events – the Covid-19 pandemic and the arrival of 100,000 refugees from war in Ukraine – whose impact on our politics remains uncertain. And history tells us that there are always surprises in any campaign. Our reporters will continue to cover the real consequences of all of this and more.

Our Irish Times/Ipsos opinion polls track party support and voter concerns over the long term so you can see the real trends beneath the short-term dips and spikes. Look out on Monday for the first instalment of Snapshot, our new public sentiment tracker with Ipsos. It tracks the ebb and flow from month to month of the issues that are preoccupying the public most. Snapshot will be a valuable addition to our coverage as the country begins to focus on the choices ahead.

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For a news organisation like ours, elections are a big logistical project, so we are deep in preparation for the electoral contests to come. You will in time notice new features, new formats and some new voices.

The Irish Times’s political team will follow the progress of all parties and candidates as their campaigns start to build momentum. When the time comes to count the vote, our correspondents will be ready to bring you all the latest results and the best analysis.

You may be a politics obsessive who wants to track every twist and turn of events as they unfold. Or you might just want to keep up to speed with the hard facts in order to make a well-informed decision. Either way, I’m committed to our journalism being comprehensive, authoritative and scrupulously fair. I hope you enjoy it and find it helpful.

Ruadhán Mac Cormaic

Editor