The Dáil rises next week for the Christmas recess. The Taoiseach is off to Brussels for a crucial EU summit, and then to Lebanon to see the troops. The Cabinet will wind up its business for the year on Tuesday, “barring emergencies”. There are lunches to be had and pubs to be crammed into afterwards. So, yes: it’s review of the year time.
Looking back over the year is a useful exercise in political analysis – not just because it forces us to focus on what was important, but because, by extension, it reminds us that a lot of the so-called controversies were actually not all that important after all. Entertaining, certainly. But not of enduring importance. Who now remembers, for example, which Social Democrat got in to trouble this year for blacking up his face a decade and a half ago?
So here are the three things that I think were most important over the course of 2025:
Government formation and the new divide in Irish politics
It may seem obvious but perhaps the most important thing to happen was the formation of the new Government in January, following the November 2024 general election. It had been obvious since the votes were counted that Fianna Fáil (triumphant) and Fine Gael (relieved) would be returning to power together. The only question was, would one of the smaller left-wing parties, or a combination of them, replace the decimated Greens as the third element of the new Coalition?
Body recovered in search for missing teenager Benjamin Spot
Neighbours at war: ‘I always try to talk people out of court. But sometimes it becomes an obsession’
Opinions are hardening against Ireland in Britain and the US. How worried should we be?
Gardaí identify suspected prime mover in death of toddler found buried near Donabate, Co Dublin
But neither Labour nor the Social Democrats were interested in that. So a group of Independents, co-ordinated by Tipperary TD Michael Lowry, moved in. The combination of Lowry’s involvement, the realisation that they were embarking on another five years in opposition and a political stroke that sought to give more speaking time to Independents at their expense led to a sustained outburst of anger and disorder on the Opposition benches that became the leitmotif of the Dáil’s opening weeks.
The suggestion that Irish democracy was imperilled by a relatively minor change to Dáil speaking time was not one that bore much scrutiny – but it detonated effectively as a political charge. And if the new Government’s formation was the enduring fact of the first half of the year, it was accompanied by the qualification that it been formed in a way that both turbocharged and united opposition to it. The unity of the left Opposition parties forged in those early months would have a spectacular expression when the second big political event of the year – the presidential election – arrived in the autumn.
Left rising
Catherine Connolly’s election was an important moment not only for the country, giving us our President for the next seven years, but also for the left because it demonstrated the potential for co-operation. Few are naive enough to believe that the ultimate goal of a left-wing government without Fianna Fáil or Fine Gael, led by Sinn Féin and staffed by representatives of Labour, the Social Democrats, People Before Profit and Independents (imagine being the chief whip) is suddenly likely, but the winning of the presidency can reasonably be seen – and is certainly seen by many of their voters – as a step in that direction. How Connolly herself relates to the Government, and whether she seeks to use the Áras to play a political role, will be one of the things to watch next year. Her inauguration speech suggested she would; her early weeks in office not.
[ Are Micheál Martin’s days as Fianna Fáil leader drawing to a close?Opens in new window ]
The presidential election had one further effect: it destabilised Micheál Martin’s leadership of Fianna Fáil. Before the election, Martin was at the peak of his powers, his authority within his party unchallengeable. Now he faces an augmented and emboldened band of rebels and a middle ground already beginning to look beyond him. Martin resuscitated his party from near-death and has consequently always got his way. But someday he will not. That is the way of politics, and of life.
The dog that didn’t bark
Another important thing to happen this year was something that didn’t happen – the monstering of the Irish economy by Donald Trump’s tariffs and his wider assault on the global trading system.
Trump’s return to the White House has upturned global politics and changed the way the world works. In the early part of the year, there was real fear that his incontinent declarations of tariffs hither and yon would finally clobber the multinational sector and their corporation tax payments, smashing the Irish economy into the wall, and plunging the public finances into deficit.
[ Ireland dodged a bullet this year. But there’s a caveatOpens in new window ]
In fact, two areas saw steady growth: corporation tax receipts and warnings that corporation tax receipts can’t be taken for granted. One of these will definitely continue into next year; the other, well, it can’t be taken for granted. But the fact that calamity was avoided this year was important. Imagine if it were different.
Paschal Donohoe left Irish politics after a decade as one of its most influential figures. Donohoe might not have been as prudent as he pretended to be, but he was probably as prudent as Irish politics would let a finance minister be in the circumstances, and almost certainly more prudent than any of the available alternatives. His departure leaves a gap in the Coalition not just in the budget-making area (we’ll see how Simon Harris shapes up in that regard) but in the problem-solving one.
Donohoe’s 10th and last budget stripped out the pre-election giveaways of recent years, but maintained spending growth at a rate criticised by most economists, and certainly by the State’s own fiscal watchdog.
The Government is, the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council said, “budgeting like there’s no tomorrow”. It is a criticism echoed by economists across the spectrum – but it almost never appears in the Dáil, where the only demands are for more spending. International trends and events are likely to dictate whether it can all continue next year.
