If the Government is planning a general election in autumn, it is now in its last 100 days.
We’ve been here before. Enda Kenny was ready to go to the country in the autumn of 2015, but Labour would not agree, and instead an election was held in February 2016. Leo Varadkar hesitated to capitalise on his government’s achievements on Brexit in the autumn of 2019, and instead he was forced into an election in February 2020. Those elections saw Fine Gael much diminished from its historic high in 2011, when it temporarily replaced Fianna Fáil as the natural party of government.
The natural party of government is no longer either Fianna Fáil or Fine Gael, but rather a coalition of both with other parties – and only then if the numbers add up. That is how far the terms and conditions of Irish politics have changed in recent years.
The Sinn Féin surge is over and its fightback has hardly begun. The launch of the party’s policy on international protection, A Fair System That Works, was marred by a scrap on RTÉ Radio One last week between Mary Lou McDonald and broadcaster Philip Boucher Hayes. The Sinn Féin leader, once a supremely confident voice, skilled at calling out what was wrong, struggled to explain her new policy and got annoyed at having to do so.
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What McDonald had better not do is another interview without having her costings off by heart
On Thursday, Sinn Féin launched its affordable housing policy. It is a precursor of a more substantial and fully costed housing policy in September. That policy will be about delivering 60,000 new homes a year up to 2029. The launched document says the party in government can deliver affordable homes for €300,000, a figure McDonald was criticised for when she broached it last Christmas as a target for house prices in general. Cheaper cost rentals of €1,000 per month are also part of the plan.
The Irish Times snapshot poll published on Monday showed that housing has overtaken immigration as the key issue for voters, and that has been the case in eight out of 13 months in which the poll has been taken.
Housing is the terrain on which Sinn Féin would prefer to fight the election whereas International Protection is the issue it avoided as long as it could. Indeed, the party’s current policy on International Protection is an attempt to talk tougher while not actually moving very far rightwards.
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However, affordable houses at €300,000 and rents at €1,000 (if viable), would be the centrepiece of a transformative campaign. What McDonald had better not do is another interview without having her costings off by heart. The scrutiny of these figures will be intense. If they crumble, so will Sinn Féin’s prospects and the party has now come so far that its future leadership is likely for the first time to be tied to electoral performance. That would represent an extraordinary normality for Sinn Féin. It should not be assumed, in the event of a change, that the Sinn Féin president, as distinct from party leader in the Dáil, will be a southerner.
Going into this election, the Government’s has some advantages. Simon Harris has pulled Fine Gael from negative into positive territory. Micheál Martin is reassuring to – and popular with – Fine Gael voters, which is important for transfers. Fianna Fáil is holding its own, albeit at levels at or below its performance at the last general election.
As for the Greens, they delivered a 6.8 per cent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions in 2023, an astonishing achievement in a growing economy. There is little reward in sight for them, however, and the challenge for their new leader Roderic O’Gorman is to break free of the institutionalism that marked him as a minister. What the Greens need now is a flamethrower.
The Irish Times snapshot poll published on Monday showed that housing has overtaken immigration as the key issue for voters
The other seminal achievement of the Government in the last term was the introduction by Heather Humphreys of pensions auto-enrolment, due to go live next year. It is a gamechanger in restabilising an element of security for what promises to be the longest-lived but least secure generation in living memory.
It is those issues of security, of wellbeing and of concern for the future that will dominate the general election. The local and European elections were an interesting aside involving different issues, and a different electorate. If the last general election is a guide, an additional 13 per cent of voters will show up, compared to the local elections, and that is transformative.
Those who did not vote on June 7th, undecided voters and voters who make up their minds late will have a major influence on the outcome of the general election. For those voters, housing will be a key issue, and Sinn Féin’s launch on Thursday was an attempt to reset the terms of the debate.