The stakes couldn’t be higher for all the major political parties in the forthcoming Dublin Bay South byelection.
The outcome will signpost whether the political centre is capable of holding or whether the country is inevitably on course to a Sinn Féin-dominated government after the next general election.
It may also have more immediate implications for the leaders of all three Government parties as a bad result for any one of them could imperil their authority and embolden their internal critics.
Fine Gael has taken a big risk by dumping former TD Kate O’Connell as a candidate in favour of Councillor James Geoghegan. In a dreadful election for her party last year, O’Connell came close to holding her seat and in normal circumstances would have been an automatic choice for the byelection.
Her high public profile would have given her a head start in a constituency which has one of the strongest Fine Gael votes in the country.
O’Connell’s departure from the race has been widely attributed to her scathing criticisms of party leader Leo Varadkar but her failure to secure a nomination goes deeper than that. Constituency sources are adamant that the membership was overwhelmingly against her and that, rather than any leadership plot, is why she was forced out.
Her unpopularity with party members may be the main reason she is not the candidate but Fine Gael is taking a huge gamble in assuming that the relatively unknown Geoghegan will be capable of getting the same level of support from the voters as O’Connell was likely to obtain.
A barrister and Dublin city councillor, he has a political and legal pedigree second to none. One grandfather, also named James, was a Fianna Fáil minister for justice in Eamon de Valera’s first government and later attorney general and Supreme Court judge. His other grandfather Thomas Finlay was an active member of Fine Gael who ended up as chief justice. Both of the candidate’s parents were also Supreme Court judges.
Looked at from one perspective, Geoghegan can be portrayed as a representative of privilege and entitlement. The other perspective is that of a bright young man with a lucrative legal career ahead of him who has decided to devote himself to public service.
His performance in the byelection will not only determine his own future career but will be a decisive moment for his party leader. The constituency is Fine Gael heartland and, if the party cannot hold it, Varadkar’s days could be numbered.
The Green Party has a similar conundrum with the party’s most obvious candidate Hazel Chu having openly defied party leader Eamon Ryan. Chu is facing a challenge from another party councillor Claire Byrne for the nomination.
Ryan, unsurprisingly, is backing Byrne but, whoever the candidate is, a poor result could prompt questions about the Ryan’s leadership despite his poll-topping performance last year.
Poor performance
For the other coalition party, Fianna Fáil, the byelection poses a different conundrum. A poor performance could be interpreted as damaging to Taoiseach Micheál Martin but it would be even more damaging for the party’s sitting constituency TD and open rival Jim O’Callaghan.
The bar is not very high for Fianna Fail, given that the party only won 13.8 per cent of the vote at the last election, but if it falls below that figure questions will arise as to whether O’Callaghan is the answer to its problems in the capital. The fact that he is director of elections means he can have no excuses for a bad result.
The Labour Party candidate Senator Ivana Bacik is finally getting a run in the constituency where she has had ambitions for some time. It will be a successful outing for her if she can improve on the 8 per cent the party won in the general election as that would put her in with a real chance in a general election.
When it comes to Sinn Féin, one thing for sure is that there will be no public squabbling about candidate selection. The leadership will decide the issue and that will be that. Just look at the way the party brutally dropped its Derry Assembly members, former MEP Martina Anderson and Karen Mullen. They were deemed to have failed the party in the city.
The byelection is an opportunity with no great downside for Sinn Féin. It was one of the few constituencies in the country where the party did not top the poll at the last election. Given its standing in the opinion polls, it should be able to at least come in second place on the first count and if it can attract transfers from the Greens and left wing candidates it would be in with a chance of taking the seat.
The byelection transfer pattern will provide an important clue as to the future direction of Irish politics. If Fine Gael can get good transfers from its coalition partners the party can entertain serious hopes of retaining power in a future coalition.
However, if Sinn Féin gets enough transfers to win the seat the only conclusion will be that it is on course to win power next time around.