Ireland General Discussion

[LabourJersey]

It isn't just Sweden and Finland that have moved towards joining NATO after decades of neutrality: 

Poll: More Irish want to join NATO in wake of Ukraine invasion
Russian attack tests Ireland’s neutral posture – and casts a spotlight on weak Irish defenses.

Interesting thought, but I imagine the Irish preference towards neutrality is going to remain pretty strong (especially given how dominant the UK has been in NATO recently)

[LabourJersey]

Joe Kennedy III will be named Special Envoy to Northern Ireland.

Biden handing JK a political lifeline after his Senate run went up in smoke.

What are the odds he can sway Westminster to bring the DUP to heel and restart Stormont?

Minimal, probably. I also don't see this as particularly helpful to Kennedy's political career unless he's present for some major NI agreement (or even a border poll) and even then I don't see that helping him much

[LabourJersey]

Proposed constituency boundaries for the next election released.
Full report here : https://ec-report.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/constituency-review-report-2023.pdf

Fascinating map, thanks for this.

Really illustrates how Dublin-centric the Republic actually is.

[LabourJersey]

Quite possibly the most pro-British PM the RoI has ever had.

Very few countries (other than I suppose Belgium) have elected - although admittedly accidentally in Bruton's case - someone who believed that it would have been better for the state of which he was leader not to have existed as an independent entity.

Care to elaborate? Am aware of his infamous fawning over of Charles when he visited the ROI, but was Bruton that consistently pro-UK (and was he punished for that politically?)

[LabourJersey]

How does this referendum loss affect FG/FF's decision for when to hold the next election?

Will this persuade them to wait until March 2025 to hang on, or would this encourage the need for a "reset" that only an election can provide?

[LabourJersey]

Aren't the SocDems (their name notwithstanding) clearly to the left of Labour economically?

Yes, although that may mainly be due to not having been in government. It is very much a Student Left "we like nice things and don't like horrible ones" party.

That sort of milquetoast attitude seems like a good idea considering the major parties descend from warlord cliques and the other parties are granola neolibs, abortion haters, blairites, and a Trotskyist coalition.

Calling FF and FG "descendants of warlord cliques" makes them much cooler than they actually are.

[LabourJersey]

He's not even the most famous Irish Harris, that would be Richard Harris who was a Catholic. As far as I know Simon Harris is also one, though he is from Greystones, the town with the highest proportion of Protestants in the south (10%). Heather Humphreys, who's also mentioned in that article I linked, is a Presbyterian who's father was in the Orange Order.

But yeah, lot of Irish Catholics will have English/Norman surnames. Case in point - Gerry Adams. Honorable mention goes to Sean Lemass though who has a surname of Huguenot origin.

Learning that a member of the Republic of Ireland's Cabinet is a Presbyterian with family in the Orange Order is... quite the surprise to me.

Irish politics is a lot more complicated than one would think!

[LabourJersey]

Behold the Harris Hurricane:

IrelandThinks, for the Sunday Independent:

SF 26 (-1)
FG 21 (-1)
Ind/Oth 18 (+4)
FF 16 (-1)
SD 6 (-)
GP 4 (-)
Aontú 4 (-)
Lab 3 (-1)
SWP/SP 2 (-)

It's a complete mystery why replacing one weird and offputting leader who'd been around forever with another (differently) weird and offputting leader who's been around forever has not boosted FG's poll ratings into the stratosphere.

What sort of government would those figures lead to? Another FG/FF/Greens coalition?

This is a breakdown of this poll I believe when it comes to estimated seats 88 needed for a majority so the current coalition would fall short. Currently the most logical match-up would be Sinn Fein, Fianna Fail and the Social Democrats but whether that could come to fruition is another thing.

How open is Fianna Fáil to joining a coalition with Sinn Fein? I was under the impression that FF would be really resistant to such a coalition.

[LabourJersey]

RedC for the Business Post:

SF 27 (+2)
Ind/Oth 21 (+2)
FG 20 (+1)
FF 14 (-2)
SD 6 (-)
Aontú 4 (-1)
GP 3 (-1)
Lab 3 (-)
SWP/SP 2 (-1)

The International Protection cluster**** seems to be helping the Independent/RON surge to the point where they're now ahead of both government parties (I am skeptical that FF are *quite* as low as this - panel polls traditionally underestimate them - but it's not a good look).

Getting below 17.5 percent (2011's result) would be pretty devastating for FF, wouldn't it? Especially since they seem to be the Irish version of a "natural party of government" a la the Canadian Liberals

[LabourJersey]

RedC for the Business Post:

SF 27 (+2)
Ind/Oth 21 (+2)
FG 20 (+1)
FF 14 (-2)
SD 6 (-)
Aontú 4 (-1)
GP 3 (-1)
Lab 3 (-)
SWP/SP 2 (-1)

The International Protection cluster**** seems to be helping the Independent/RON surge to the point where they're now ahead of both government parties (I am skeptical that FF are *quite* as low as this - panel polls traditionally underestimate them - but it's not a good look).

Getting below 17.5 percent (2011's result) would be pretty devastating for FF, wouldn't it? Especially since they seem to be the Irish version of a "natural party of government" a la the Canadian Liberals

This is an unpopular government which largely hasn't realized it is unpopular, partly because of a friendly mainstream media that views it as the Last Bastion Of All That Is Good And Wholesome Against The Shinner Scum and partly because there have been no electoral tests since the 2020 election barring a bye-election in the wealthiest and most atypical constituency in the country in the summer of 2021 which resulted in a Pyrrhic victory for an otherwise moribund Labour Party.

The FG component has borked housing through five years of complete inactivity between 2011 and 2016 as a result of listening to media and academic commentary at the time that told them that the ghost estates after the 2008 crash meant that we would never need to build any housing ever again. The loss of their majority after 2016 and the need for FF support/tolerance to continue in government meant that housing did resume but everything that is being done is being done about five years too late and, as in Canada, large-scale labour immigration means that the official housing targets are way behind what's actually needed. And housing is either the cause of every other problem or is exacerbating it.

While not on the same scale as the UK, wages have not kept pace with inflation over the last couple of years and people who continually hear about massive economic growth but see none of its fruits in their own living standards become dissatisfied. And while public services and infrastructure have not been gutted as they have been in the UK (we were not fool enough to give FG a majority in 2016) they have struggled to keep pace with the population increase.

The Greens have been given pretty much all they wanted on their pet areas of government and have proceeded to do things that make very little difference in the grand scheme of things but which do succeed in antagonising normie voters.

On top of labour immigration, we've had a proportionately large number of Ukrainian refugees (now about 2% of the population) but what has lit the spark has been a post-Covid boom in International Protection applicants, most of whom are coming from countries such as Algeria, Georgia, Nigeria, and South Africa which are not generally considered war zones or hell-holes. The IP system has long been slow and inefficient, with an appeal process meaning that most applicants are able to continue living in the country long enough to attain leave to remain. Any deportation mechanism for people finally refused asylum is equally as dilatory as the appeals process. In addition, there were a number of well-intentioned decisions (allowing asylum applicants to work after six months, a well-publicised amnesty for existing illegal immigrants, a well-publicised promise of own-door accommodation rather than direct provision - which has now had to be long-fingered because of pressure on housing) which have become pull factors.

The ministers in charge are a doe-eyed but ideological innocent from the Green Party and a complete incompetent from FG who has been given a pass from the (supportive) media up until now because she is blonde and proves that she is a Girl Boss by spending most of her time on maternity leave. The numbers coming mean that there is no longer any space in the official reception centres so hotels (mostly but not always disused), office blocks, and factories are being called into service and most of these are either in - often quite isolated - rural areas or in working-class inner-city areas or industrial suburbs.

It's essentially a cocktail of the same mistakes that have been made in Canada, Sweden and the UK and it has finally produced the same sort of backlash that has occurred in those countries. Thankfully our would-be far-right are either too weird or too obviously scumbaggish to be an electoral (as opposed to a security) threat but there's no guarantee that that (relatively) happy situation will continue.

FF are in some ways the fall-guys in all of this - they're arguably the least aggravating component of the current coalition in that they haven't been there for thirteen years unlike FG and they're not preachy and incompetent meddlers like the Greens but they're also the least defined component. The rebrand by Martin tried to detoxify FF by making it as different as possible from pre-2008 FF (socially-liberal, economically centre-left, agnostic on UI) but it has also removed the feeling that FF Got Things Done (even if they had to cut ethical corners to do so). Being beige is not a positive, at least not now.

Where are Sinn Fein with regards to immigration? Are they less supportive than the coalition parties

The scenario you're describing sounds like the opportunity is really, really ripe for anti-immigration parties (or at least parties more skeptical of immigration), but to my knowledge SF does not seem to be dramatically different than the others.