Ireland’s general election will likely return the country’s centrist coalition to power. They have a surplus to spend, but also a housing crisis and other challenges to confront.
reland’s existing governing coalition is on track to hold onto power, following last week’s general election. The parties, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, will need a new partner as a result of a drop off in support for the Greens.
The success of this centrist duo rides a wave of promises of spending and tax cuts thanks to the country’s significant budget surplus. That puts Ireland in a luckier position than many other members of the European Union, which are facing fiscal constraints.
Still, the next government will have to address similar issues — among them, a housing crisis and immigration policy.
For what’s next, The Parliament Magazine spoke to Lisa Keenan, a political science professor at Trinity College Dublin.
The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.
All indications point towards another centrist coalition government. If this is the case, who do you see as the major power players?
The big winner from this election is Micheál Martin, the leader of Fianna Fáil. He was trailing Fine Gael and Sinn Fein in the polls and it was expected that he perhaps wasn’t going to be able to take all that many seats, particularly when Fine Gael had a 26% rating in the polls. At the moment, his party is well ahead on seats and he’s in pole position to become Taoiseach [prime minister].
It has been a less good election for Simon Harris, although given his poll ratings for his party during the last week of the campaign, they’re likely to be quite pleased.
For Sinn Fein, this will be a mixed picture. It’s a bit of a relief after their abysmal poll ratings towards the end of the summer and their poor performance in the local elections, but compared to 2020, it’s really a big drop in support. They’ve gone down by 5.5 percentage points.
How long do you expect coalition negotiations to go on for?
We would be very surprised to have an outcome before Christmas. Certainly the Dáil [Irish Parliament] will reconvene and there will be a vote for Taoiseach, but the two parties together are not going to have majorities.
They will need to have some type of agreement, whether that’s a party going into coalition with them or a party that has agreed to support them from opposition, but it will take time to iron out those details.
At the moment, it looks like the outcome would be Fianna Fail and Fine Gael probably with some like-minded independents agreeing to go into government with them.
Read the full piece on The Parliament here.
Between the Lynes 