Images of women from election 2024 are destined to show up repeatedly on Reeling in the Years. Holly Cairns’s leadership of a hugely successful Social Democrats campaign, culminating in pictures of her and her perfectly timed election-day baby girl. Ivana Bacik presiding over a Labour resurgence with Marie Sherlock emerging as criminal Gerry Hutch’s nemesis. Mary Lou McDonald surviving an annus horribilis to consolidate Sinn Féin’s position as a major force in Irish politics.
For all the talk about a leaden election and the focus on a few established Independents to pick up the government slack, one possible outcome happening in parallel could mark it as an Irish election for the ages: a groundbreaking political realignment with a cohesive Opposition engineered by those three women.
What makes it all the more extraordinary is that this election was no breakthrough for women. Only four were elected in the whole of Munster. Fourteen constituencies, including two in Dublin, have none at all.
In a population evenly divided between male and woman just a quarter of the new Dáil will be women. In another dispiriting and possibly related fact, four in 10 people didn’t bother to vote at all. Much effort will be devoted to establishing why. Hopefully this will include the incessant complaining about a boring election, the absence of choice or – not often mentioned – plain laziness. But it’s also worth noting that even in 2020, the one that made Sinn Féin a serious player, fewer than two in three bothered to vote. That was even less than the 65 per cent recorded in 2016, one of the lowest in Europe. Or in 2011, when, even with Ireland terrifyingly teetering on bankruptcy, the turnout was barely 70 per cent.
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One of the very few things over-65s are not routinely blamed for is failing to vote (in fact they’re too dutiful about it for many tastes). But the routine assumption that they are to blame for the same-old-same-old election outcomes needs a refresh. They make up just 15.3 per cent of the population. Under 30s make up 20 per cent of the electorate. The 25-44-year-olds and 45-64 year-old groupings combined form more than half the population.
Anyone looking for culprits for their particular post-election gripe or disappointment might start looking beyond a group of which 45 per cent did not vote for Fianna Fáil or Fine Gael. Look at who didn’t bother to vote. Look to the sources of their election guidance.
Some found it in the shape of Hutch (61), the well-known criminal whose decision to stand in Dublin Central conveniently meant the Spanish high court released him on a €100,000 bail bond in relation to alleged money laundering. The spectacle of a grinning Hutch being pursued by gangs of documentary makers and some wildly excited media in that vomitous catch-me-if-you-can caper outside the RDS count centre on Sunday will be another candidate for Reeling in the Years. The media resembled dogs trying to catch a car, with no idea of what they were going to do if they actually caught up with him.
The fact that he’d just snarled a few quintessentially Trumpian insults at one of their number should have been a hint that more was at stake than clickbaity soundbites. And the fact that RTÉ’s Paul Reynolds had the grit to persist with questions about the Special Criminal Court judgement (which found Hutch had control of three AK-47 assault rifles used in the Regency Hotel murder in 2016) should have sobered them up.
Of course Hutch ignored the questions, delivering instead the essential conspiracist’s answer that Reynolds was “getting paid off the State and RTÉ ... to say this”. But as he sat briefly in the count centre and Reynolds asked him what he stood for, Hutch’s answer was revealing. “They’re looking for change and if I got elected in I would give them whatever they want.” What kind of change ? “They want change”. What change? “I will do whatever they want,” he said. Change. Which change would he start with? Even when prompted with the word, Hutch wouldn’t say “homelessness”. There was nothing. His nomination papers described his occupation as “consultant”. Some probably found it funny, though few serious analysts treated his candidature as a joke.
But the tendency among some commentators to shrug and opine that people are disillusioned and therefore reach for corrupt gangsters who promise “change” is a self-fulfilling concept.
Democracy is on a downward arc around the world and in Europe. Strongman thugs are taking over, purporting to clean out the elites and create a people’s utopia. Trump’s and Russia’s far-right Irish footsoldiers may have failed miserably in this election but the legacy of insane conspiracies, hypocrisy and proud ignorance lives on.
The reaction to Hutch winning a Dáil seat is barely imaginable. Conor Lenihan, one of those involved in Jim Sheridan’s Hutch documentary, has said they were “lucky” to get an interview with the candidate, who was apparently inundated with international media interview offers, including Bloomberg and the Financial Times. It seems we learned nothing from the ascent of Trump.
For all the lamentation around the same-old, same-old outcome, that could have been the scenario dominating the Irish news this week if the mythmakers had had their way or if Neasa Hourigan’s or Gary Gannon’s transfers had gone elsewhere. The system held. There’s an outcome that’s worth celebrating.