Poll shows Gilmore out of touch and his Labour Party running out of hope

Political World with Harry McGee – harrymcgee@gmail.com

The latest Irish Times/Ipsos MRBI opinion poll published earlier this week strongly suggested the die had been cast not only for this Friday’s referendum on the future of the Seanad but as well on the future of the Labour Party.

There has been a spate of opinion polls on the Seanad, culminating with the Times’ one on Monday. What has been interesting about is that, unlike other recent referendums, the big lead enjoyed by the Yes side has not been closed significantly.

The big swings of recent campaigns in the final week have just not materialised. That 15 to 20 point gap between Yes and No has remained consistent.

The most intriguing part of our poll was when we drilled down on the reasons why people were voting No. Fine Gael got an awful lot of (deserved) criticism for the crudeness of its main messages – namely that scrapping the Seanad would save €20 million per annum and leave us with fewer politicians.

Crude it may have been but it wasn’t plucked out of the air. There’s no party with a similar addiction to focus groups and to private polling and their respondents were telling Fine Gael that these were the reasons why they would support it. And that was borne out in the Irish Times opinion poll where money was the main reason people wanted it scrapped.

I went out with canvassers to the Square in Tallaght on Saturday and was a bit shocked to see the complete lack of interest. A team of chuggers would have got a better reception.

It wasn’t that people were hostile to those citizens (and they were all volunteers) canvassing for a Yes or a No vote. They were completely indifferent.

You can blame politicians for a lot of things – and the knee-jerk reaction is to curse this class of people – but you can’t  blame them for those who pass through their lives in ignorance of the democratic set-up of the State.

The Seanad costs €20 million a year, although its scrapping will certainly not save anything like that as the permanent staff working there will have to be redeployed elsewhere. To put it into context, the State is bringing in adjustments that will amount to €3.1 billion in cuts and taxes (160 times the cost of the Seanad) in the Budget on October 15.

The Seanad as it is set up does not work and is a rotten borough. I would have had no objection to its scrapping had there been a comprehensive and radical reform of the Dáil, but that is patently not going to happen.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.