Be careful what you wish for. Eight months ago, I publicly urged the Taoiseach and Tánaiste to stop the spin and hold the general election at the end of October. They took a bit too long to heed my advice and missed the target by a month.
However, progress is progress. Delaying the election until early 2025 benefited no one—not the opposition, government and especially not the voters.
You could say the same about the recent ‘Snakes & Ladders’ speculation from “sources close” to the three government party leaders. Fortunately, the Taoiseach and Tánaiste brought that to an end last Wednesday. Not before time. I know the many people I’ve met on my travels across Limerick city were really irritated by their pointless gamesmanship.
Now that the date is set and the phony campaign is over, we can concentrate on the key issues facing the people: housing, crime, and prices. This is where all our focus should be for the next three weeks, not on the latest opinion poll.
I’m not dismissing opinion polls. Politicians are addicted to them. Every Saturday night, my phone buzzes with colleagues and supporters wanting updates on who is up or down.
While they provide insights into party standings before the campaign, exit polls from previous elections show that about 30% of voters will decide their vote in the final days of the campaign, with an additional 25% deciding in the first two weeks of the campaign.
This means today, on the first Sunday of the 2024 general election campaign, only one out of every two people reading this column knows who they will vote for.
There is still a great deal for the three main parties, and all the range of smaller parties and independents, to play for. This election is far from decided. The campaign will matter. The discussion and debate of the policy proposals on offer will matter.
All of which is bad news for the main opposition party, Sinn Féin.
It faces into this election after a damaging series of controversies and those came hot on the heels of a crash from being seen as the main alternative government party, to coming third in the three-horse race.
The main opposition party should have the key issues on its side. It should be ready to offer clear and better alternatives on housing, crime, and the cost of living.
But it isn’t.
Does anyone know Sinn Féin’s crime policy? It is so far down on their website that you have to scroll back to July 2023 to find one. Sinn Féin’s big 2023 idea on crime was to “Increase the intake capacity for Garda training in Templemore.” By how much? No comment. What should the target garda strength be? No comment. This will have the thugs and vandals quaking.
Turn to housing and you do get some specifics, but these come nowhere close to offering a viable alternative.
That comes as no surprise when you see consider that Northern Ireland’s social housing waiting list, where Sinn Féin is a party of government, has grown each and every year since 2017. It has almost doubled over the past two decades. The number of new homes built in Belfast dropped by almost 18% over the past 12 months. House building in Northern Ireland has hit a six-decade low.
It is a bad track record. Their housing plans for here are just as underwhelming. Their one big idea is to offer houses where you’ll never own the land on which it’s built. Buy one and you will need to beg the State’s permission to sell it when you want to scale up as your family grows. This is not a model of home ownership that meets the needs of the aspiring homeowners I meet.
It doesn’t get any better when you examine their health policy. It promises free prescriptions for all as well as access to GP and Dentists. All very laudable. But where will they find all these extra doctors & dentists? We cannot find enough health professionals today to fill the posts that already fully funded. So where will they source all these extra ones, never mind find the additional money?
Once again, when you look to where Sinn Féin has held the Health portfolio, first with Bairbre de Brún and later with Michelle O’Neill, you see that waiting lists for a first appointment with a consultant increased by almost 10% last year.
I could go on listing Sinn Féin policy duplicity, false promises, and failures, but we have almost three weeks to go. I know Sinn Féin’s policies are a busted flush, but I am in politics long enough not to start writing them off.
Many people feel disenchanted with the political landscape; they are weary of spin-obsessed politicians who treat them merely as segments of Tik Tok audience. Voters crave local representatives who actively engage with them rather than simply broadcast at them.
In every election there are what Donald Rumsfeld termed the unknown unknowns. These are the things you think you know that it turns out you did not know. These can decide the outcome. But so too can the known knowns and as this campaign kicks off, the biggest known known is that incumbent governments across the globe. are being turfed out. Can we buck the trend here? Its not impossible, but it will take a lot of hard work and frankness.
