Political World
Political polls fail to reflect true impact of Dail’s growing band of Independents
World of Politics with Harry McGee – harrymcgee@gmail.com
Finian McGrath has three claims to fame. One is that he was born and reared in Tuam and is a true sham. The second is that he is the brother of Fergal ‘Red’ McGrath, a major figure in arts in the west of Ireland. The third is that he’s a TD, and an Independent one at that.
On every occasion we publish an opinion poll in The Irish Times, it’s inevitable that one of us will bump into Finian as he congregates with the handful of smokers in the yard of Leinster House.
His moustache, which sometimes makes him look like one of the characters in James Joyce’s Ulysses, is habitually creased into a smile. But that can be a little diverting because there’s also a glint of steel there (he would not have survived three elections in Dublin North Central if that was not so).
When Finian buttonholes you after an opinion poll has been published, he will say something along the lines of: “You’ve completely ignored the Independents and others again. But they are still on 20 per cent.”
And he has a point. It’s a sign of the continuing volatility in the Irish political landscape that roughly one in five voters say they are voting for ‘none of the above’. They are rejecting Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil, Labour and Sinn Féin, to plump for a candidate who is either Independent or belongs to a smaller party.
And being newspaper people and liking everything to be defined – in black and white – we tend to ignore the Independents in the narrative to concentrate on the more graspable narrative of the main parties being up and down.
There is a bit of a problem when you are trying to analyse Independents and how they will fare. It’s the same quandary that Henry Kissinger observed with the EU: “Who do I pick up the phone and talk to when I want to talk to Europe?” he asked rhetorically.
Nonetheless, Independents have done very well in Ireland over the past two decades. Our system of proportional representation in multi-seat constituencies (plus the fact that we are a small society) lends itself to ensuring Independents get elected.
The number elected has fluctuated a lot in recent elections but you cannot deny that Independents have been influential. There was, for instance, the Gang of Four who bolstered the Fianna Fáil-led government from 1997 and got lots of goodies for their constituencies in return.
In the last Dáil, another Fianna Fáil-led government was dependent on a number of Independents of which Finian McGrath was one for a while.
The problem with being an Independent is you cannot be pretend to be anything more. Occasionally you will get a chance to be influential, if you and a few others hold the balance of power.
There were so many this time around – 16, excluding the United Left Alliance – that they were able to form a technical group. And that seemed to be replete with possibilities.
The group has allowed Independent TDs privileges usually only available to parties – rights to representation and chairs of committees; the right to table private member motions; the right to have a whip; and the right to ask priority questions.
With so much guaranteed ‘air time’, a good few have acquired very strong national profiles including McGrath himself, Mattie McGrath, Shane Ross, Catherine Murphy and Stephen Donnelly. It also allows them a slot on the high-profile Leaders’ Questions each week.
But it’s a technical group and when you have right-of-centre people like Shane Ross and Stephen Donnelly in the same team as left wingers like Catherine Murphy and Thomas Pringle, it means it will be hard to achieve coherence.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
World of Politics with Harry McGee
Academically, politics is described as a science. But in the real world, it’s more of an art – and one of the big decisions a Government has to make is to decide when to call an election.
Will they see out the full term, or will they go early – either to mitigate the damage they will ship, or to secure a victory before things go awry, or the economy takes a dip, or some kind of controversy erupts?
Timing is everything.
And there’s a bit of art to that – not to mention a lot of luck. If you call it early and win big, you’re a genius. If you call it early and lose, you are the political version of the village fool.
Charlie Haughey was a poor judge of the public mood. Twice he called snap elections and on both occasions they backfired. Haughey succeeded Jack Lynch as Taoiseach in late 1979 and did not – technically – have his own mandate. He tried to remedy that by calling an election in 1981. But it recoiled. Ray MacSharry warned him not to hold it during the H Block hunger strikes when republican prisoners were dying each day. He did not listen to the advice and found himself out of office.
After his return to power in 1987, Haughey tired of presiding over a minority government that kept on losing votes in the Oireachtas (the opposition won nine private members motions).
So he called a snap general election and it backfired. Fianna Fáil lost seats and had to broker a coalition deal with the Progressive Democrats and his long-standing political adversary Dessie O’Malley.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
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World of Politics with Harry McGee
I was cycling down Mount Street in Dublin on Tuesday. It’s a wide esplanade that links the Grand Canal with Merrion Square. The street is a mixture of fine Georgian buildings and modern office blocks.
About half-way down is the office of the International Protection Office, which deals with asylum seekers who have arrived in the country.
Needless to say, the office has been overwhelmed in the past year. Besides an estimated 80,000 refugees who have arrived from Ukraine, there have been about 20,000 people from other parts of the world who have arrived into Dublin (mostly) claiming asylum.
The numbers peaked around Christmas, but they have been falling a little. In January, more than 1,300 people arrived seeking asylum but the numbers fell back to 831 and 858, in February and March respectively.
They are still huge numbers in a historical context.
So back to my cycle on Tuesday. I knew that some asylum seekers were camping outside the International Protection Office, but I was taken aback by how many. There were six tents lined up on the pavement directly outside. Then on the ramp that led down to the basement carpark on the side of the building, there were about another 20 tents.
It looked like what it was, a refugee camp in the middle of Dublin’s business district. If you pan out from Mount Street, you will find tents here and there in nearby streets and alleys. There were a good few tents in an alleyway off Sandwith Street about 500 metres away.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App
Download the Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App to access to Galway’s best-selling newspaper.
Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
Or purchase the Digital Edition for PC, Mac or Laptop from Pagesuite HERE.
Get the Connacht Tribune Live app
The Connacht Tribune Live app is the home of everything that is happening in Galway City and county. It’s completely FREE and features all the latest news, sport and information on what’s on in your area. Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
World of Politics with Harry McGee
God that was a dramatic and historic weekend in England, wasn’t it? So much excitement, so much change, so much hype, so much out with the old and in with the new, and what looks like the coronation of a new leader. Yes, the local elections in Britain were something else weren’t they!
Apologies for not going on about King Charles III but the contract I signed when I became a lifelong republican forbids me to discuss the topic!
I know the British local elections sound a bit boring by comparison, but the results were stunning.
The Conservatives lost nearly 1,000 seats, the British Labour Party gained almost 500 and both the Lib Dems (with 350 gains) and the Greens (gaining over 200) also had amazing days at the polls.
It was Labour’s best day since 2002 but its victory was only partial. The Greens and the Lib Dems actually made gains at the expense of Labour in more affluent areas, and in parts of Britain where there were high numbers of graduates.
It was in the Red Wall constituencies in the North of England where the Labour recovery was strongest. These are working class constituencies with pockets of deprivation where people voted for the Labour Party forever. But all of those constituencies voted for Brexit and then voted for the Tories in the next general election. Labour is now winning back some of those votes.
Local elections are classified as second-tier elections which essentially means – from a national perspective – they are not life-or-death affairs, and not everything turns on them. Of course, it’s really important to have good local representation. But they are not an amazing weather vane for who rules the country.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App
Download the Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App to access to Galway’s best-selling newspaper.
Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
Or purchase the Digital Edition for PC, Mac or Laptop from Pagesuite HERE.
Get the Connacht Tribune Live app
The Connacht Tribune Live app is the home of everything that is happening in Galway City and county. It’s completely FREE and features all the latest news, sport and information on what’s on in your area. Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
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