Sinn Féin slumped, the Greens wilted, the centre held, and the Donald returned: those were the four most important trends and events in Irish politics in the past year.
As ever in politics, lots of things that grabbed our attention weren’t all that important, even if they might have been temporarily entertaining. The important thing in these end-of-year exercises is to separate the events and trends with lasting impact from those which don’t really matter after a few weeks. Will anyone remember the controversy about the Dáil bike shed in a few years’ time? Does anyone even remember it now? But these four developments, I think, were what was worth paying attention to in 2024.
1. The Sinn Féin slump
This time last year, the question was posed here if the Dublin riots would change Irish politics. And they did – but not in the way people expected. It is true that, on polling averages, the Sinn Féin slide had begun before the Dublin riots. But as 2023 turned into 2024, the slide accelerated. And then, as the local and European elections approached, it accelerated some more.
The party won just 11-12 per cent of the vote in the locals and Europeans – just over a third of where it had been in the polls less than a year previously. There hasn’t been a collapse like it since Fianna Fáil in the midst of the financial crash.
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So what happened? I think the party was squeezed on two sides – on one side by traditional working class, strongly nationalist supporters who became agitated by the immigration issue and deserted the party because of its “soft” line on the issue, and on the other by younger, progressive voters who were alienated by its attempts to reassure middle Ireland that its promises of radical change weren’t actually that radical at all.
In response, the party hardened its stance on migration and went back to basics on housing and on economic and taxation policy. The results weren’t bad compared to May – it won 19 per cent of the vote in the general election, and while that was a drop of 5.5 points from its 2020 result, it was a helluva lot better than the locals and Euros.
But it meant that the widespread and barely questioned assumption for most of the period since the last election – that Sinn Féin would lead the next government – was overturned by events this year.
2. The Greens wilt
They always knew it was a risk, but it was still a shock when the Greens were reduced to just one TD at the election. So for the second time in a decade and a half, the Greens have been removed as a meaningful political force. And while this time – unlike when they were last ejected from government in 2011 – they leave a legacy of legislation and legally binding targets behind them, it is hard to see climate action being anything like the priority for the next government as it was for the last one.
The next government – likely to be supported by or containing Independents who have been highly critical of climate action policies – will no doubt look for easy and politically painless ways of achieving climate targets. It will find there aren’t any. At a time when the effects of climate change are ever more visible, climate action just moved down the political agenda in Ireland this year.
3. The centre held
If the cat-on-a-hot-tin-roof routine of both Micheál Martin and Simon Harris about the date of the general election in the early autumn didn’t exactly trumpet confidence about the prospects of the two parties, the eventual outcome provided firm evidence that the centre of Irish politics is holding. That is not to the liking of many people; but it is acceptable to sufficient numbers of them.
Sure, Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil sparked off each other during the election campaign, especially during the early part. Fianna Fáil was irked by the suggestion from Fine Gael that the, ah, mature Micheál Martin was suffering by comparison with the youth and vigour of Simon Harris’s new energy, whose hyperactive replacement of Leo Varadkar did so much to rejuvenate his party. Fine Gael, for its part, took severe umbrage at Fianna Fáil’s thinly veiled attacks on Helen McEntee’s performance as Minister for Justice, and Harris bridled at Martin’s “adult in the room” persona.
But as the televised debates vividly illustrated, the two parties have become essentially two sides of the same political force – the policy differences between them dwarfed by what they have in common. They were, essentially, campaigning for re-election together. They finished the campaign tag-teaming warnings about the threatening economic future, and the need for a steady hand on the tiller.
4. The Donald Returns
Hang on to your hats. Donald Trump returns to the White House in a few weeks after his crushing victory in the November elections, just a few days before the Irish election was called. Trump has promised to implement policies that could have profound impacts on Ireland, from tariffs to tax reform to promoting the return home of US companies from overseas. The economic model that has brought such prosperity to Ireland as the country nimbly exploited the benefits of globalisation and of US trade with the EU and the rest of the world, that is under threat as never before.
In addition, the security environment of Europe and the West is dramatically altered by the question marks brought by Trump to the US guarantee to its allies. The hope in Dublin – and in Brussels – is that Trump will prove as clumsy a governor as before. But hope is not a strategy. There is a sense everywhere that with the election of Trump, the world has changed in 2024. Few expect it will be for the better.
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