Irish voters buck the trend

DECEMBER 5,2024

Carol Coulter examines why the Irish general election is likely to result in more of the same government and what the left needs to do to have more impact.

The recent elections in Ireland, exceptionally in Europe and the US, resulted in the likely formation of the same government, with the exception of the Green Party, which had been the junior partner in the previous three-way coalition.

The other two parties are Fianna Fail (left-of-centre populist) and Fine Gael (a member of the Christian Democrat group in the European Parliament, but less right wing than most of its fellow-members). The programmes of both of them featured scatter-gun commitments to public spending on a variety of measures, as well as tax cuts, made possible by Ireland’s ongoing significant budget surplus.

Another striking feature of the Irish election was the failure of the far right to gain any traction, despite its attempts to stir up anti-immigrant sentiment over the past 12 months, including fomenting the Dublin riots of November 2023.

There were more than 60 far-right candidates in a number of micro-parties and running as independents. The six who won seats in local elections last July failed to be elected to the Dail (parliament) by huge margins. The highest share of the vote any of them obtained was six per cent, and most received votes in the low hundreds. A couple of sitting independent deputies who had expressed less extreme anti-immigration views did well, and a new rural-based conservative party, Independent Ireland, which argued for limitations on immigration, increased its TDs from three to four.

However, the likely new government will only have been supported by 42 per cent of the electorate. The rest of the vote, in a low poll of just under 60 per cent (though according to the Electoral Commission the size of the electorate is probably inflated by duplication) is fragmented across a variety of smaller parties and independents, with Sinn Fein taking 19 per cent of the first preference vote, resulting in 39 seats. This is a drop of 5.5 per cent on its vote share in the last election in 2020.

Six other parties, along with 17 independents, share the remaining seats, out of a Dail that will have 174 deputies. Of them, 26 or 27 can be regarded as left (including a few independents). Eighty-eight votes are needed to form a government, so there is no realistic prospect of a left government, and the most likely outcome is a Fianna Fail/Fine Gael coalition with the support of the small conservative party or a handful of independents. 

The fragmentation of political representation in the Dail is a growing feature of Irish politics. Before the financial crash of 2008 the two big parties regularly obtained the support of 80 per cent of the electorate, with the Labour Party coming a distant third. Their origins lie in the civil war fought between 1922 and 1923 over whether or not to accept the 1921 Treaty between Britain and Ireland which resulted in Partition. Their ideological differences were slight, though Fianna Fail favoured public expenditure on housing and education to a much greater degree than Fine Gael, and always enjoyed significant support among the working class and small farmers.

This ended with the 2008 crash and ensuing austerity, and Fianna Fail was decimated in the 2011 election, leading to a Fine Gael/Labour coalition. Since that election Sinn Fein has, until now, steadily increased its vote, and there has been a proliferation of smaller parties, including two with Trotskyist origins, People before Profit and Solidarity, which eventually merged.

Meanwhile, the Labour Party split in 2015, with the formation of the Social Democrats, which are untainted by the negative experience of the Labour Party in the Fine Gael-led austerity government of 2011. Successive elections have also seen the election of a plethora of independents, most of them standing on platforms related to issues specific to their constituencies.

This has been facilitated by the electoral system of proportional representation, or the single Transferable Vote (STV), along with multi-seat constituencies. The size of the poll in the constituency is divided by the number of seats (three, four or five), and this, plus one, is the quota of votes needed to be elected. Each voter can express their preference in order of their choice, and if their first choice is not elected, the candidate is eliminated, and their votes distributed according to the number twos on their ballot paper, then the number threes, and so on. If the candidate is elected with a surplus, that surplus is also distributed in the same way.

So a supporter of, say, People Before Profit/Solidarity might hope their candidate is elected, but in many constituencies this is not likely, so the voter can also vote for Sinn Fein and/or for the Labour Party or its estranged sibling, the Social Democrats, and it is likely that one of its favoured candidates will be elected. This is in contrast to the winner-takes-all, first-past-the-post system. While PR is more democratic, and allows for the representation of a wide range of political views in parliament, it also means that a decisive result is difficult to obtain.

In the recent election Fine Gael and Fianna Fail urged their supporters to transfer to each other, and this did happen resulting in a seat bonus, so together their 42 per cent vote share brought them very close to half the seats.

The left, including Sinn Fein, did not campaign for mutual transfers, but the votes tended to transfer left anyway (on the eve of the election Sinn Fein urged its voters to transfer to the Social Democrats, then People Before Profit/Solidarity). However, if there is to be a viable left alternative in Irish politics, the fragmentation needs to be overcome and alliances need to be forged outside of elections.

The biggest party on the left is Sinn Fein. Its defining policy is stressing the need to start planning now for Irish unity, while its other policies in the Republic have been broadly social democratic, though not always clear, and are subject to change when the wind blows against them. In the North, where it is already hampered by being in coalition with the conservative DUP, it also has the excuse that the purse-strings are controlled by Westminster, curtailing what the Northern Executive can do, meaning there is little radical change there.

In the Republic, the party has benefited from having had a very clear policy on the acute housing crisis and has also outlined coherent policies to address the crisis in the disability and health services. This remains the basis for its considerable support among young people and the working class, though in this election many of both groups stayed at home.

However, it has poor to no policy on climate change .It opposes carbon taxes on the basis that they increase the cost of living and refuses to challenge the model of intensive agriculture that has polluted the vast majority of Irish rivers and led to an alarming loss of biodiversity. It also remains silent on the exponential growth of data centres which threatens to overwhelm the rickety electricity grid.

It supported two ill-thought-out constitutional referenda proposed by the government, one to redefine the family away from that based solely on marriage, and the other replacing a reference to women’s role in the home by an acknowledgement of the importance of care in the home, but without the state having any obligation to support it. Both were resoundingly rejected, and Sinn Fein dropped an inexplicable prior commitment to re-run them if they were defeated.

To its credit, it opposed the ethno-nationalist rhetoric of the far right which opposes all immigration and is particularly toxic towards asylum seekers. The government deplorably mis-handled the influx of Ukrainian refugees and international protection applicants, mainly housing them (if at all) in commandeered hotels in small towns and villages, which relied on them for tourism revenue and as local facilities, and in industrial buildings in deprived urban areas. This, combined with no additional health or educational services in these areas, which were already under-resourced, squandered the widespread goodwill that had existed towards those fleeing war and persecution.

This led to a number of highly publicised protests, including the Dublin riots last November. Sinn Fein’s only initial response was to call for the resignation of the Minister for Justice and the Garda (police) Commissioner, subsequently adding the demand that asylum seekers be housed in areas with the services to support them, for a reduction in benefits to Ukrainian refugees and for more investment in the asylum-processing system.

All of this has chipped away at their previous support in the working class and among young people, who despair of the housing crisis, the worst in Europe, ever being solved, and which is driving thousands of highly educated young people to emigrate, at a time when the state is crying out for doctors, nurses and teachers. Undoubtedly this contributed to the low poll.

Some of that support went to the Labour Party and the Social Democrats. However, a pre-election pact among parties of the left based on an agreed basic platform – and the PR system favours election pacts – could have given the electorate a clear alternative to a continuation of the same.

It is undeniable that a substantial proportion of the population feel relatively satisfied with their lot, and are happy with the status quo. Real incomes have risen slightly over the past five years. Those who own their homes have seen their value rise dramatically. More than half the population has private health insurance, blunting the impact of the crisis in health services.

But major societal and structural problems remain. In 2022, according to Eurostat, 20.7 per cent of the Irish population were at risk of poverty and social exclusion, and areas of severe deprivation exist both in the major cities and some rural areas. Basic infrastructure lags 25 per cent behind the European average, with dismal public transport, an electricity grid stretched to the limits and years of under-investment in water supply and sewage treatment.

On top of, and linked to, this is the housing crisis which was the issue most identified by those interviewed in an exit poll on the evening of the election. Failure to reduce emissions is exposing Ireland to EÚ fines. The fact that few people mentioned the climate crisis does not mean Ireland will escape its effects, but with the Greens out of government it is unlikely to be a priority for the incoming government.

The policies of the parties which have been in power for over a decade are unlikely to solve these problems, which should create an opportunity for the parties of the left. It remains to be seen whether they can rise to the occasion.

Carol Coulter is former Legal Affairs Editor of the Irish Times and founder and executive director of the Child Law Project. She also campaigns on social and human rights issues.

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