It’s a known ploy of political parties to choose a location where voters are well disposed to them whenever a journalist wants to trail an election candidate on a canvass.
Aodhán Ó Ríordáin, the Labour TD for Dublin Bay North and MEP candidate, arrives at a Swords housing estate of redbrick semis, one of which is up for sale at €465,000. Many houses have two cars in the driveway and front gardens blooming with Japanese acers and old-fashioned weigela. The sign at the entrance does not announce: “Traditional Labour Party”. It says Contented Place.
Either someone in the office has missed the memo – or Labour’s natural hinterland has shifted.
“Sure, Labour won’t win,” Cathal O’Donnell challenges Ó Ríordáin when he answers his door dressed in Dublin’s GAA colours.
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“They used to say the same about the Dubs but they were wrong,” the candidate quips.
After the canvassers move to the next house, O’Donnell says: “To me, Labour are a dying party. While well-meaning, their effectiveness is waning.”
One of 23 contestants for the four European Parliament seats in the Dublin constituency, Ó Ríordáin, Labour’s spokesman on education and justice, sees himself “in the running” to take one of them.
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According to the latest Irish Times opinion poll, he is in fourth place, at 10 per cent, behind Fianna Fáil’s incumbent Barry Andrews (18 per cent), Sinn Féin’s Lynn Boylan (15 per cent) and Fine Gael’s Regina Doherty (12 per cent).
“You’re around a long time now, Aodhán, aren’t you?” Tara McCabe tells the TD at her front door.
While Ó Ríordáin’s primary pitch is his horror at the rioting in Dublin in November and his ambition to bring home benefits to the city from Brussels, McCabe wants to discuss “the nasty element in this country” that is emerging as a political force.
“The extreme right-wing are being given credence because they target people who have genuine issues like housing,” she says. “We need more solidarity about the EU. The UK and its Rwanda policy is an example of what happens when you play the popular vote.”
Ó Ríordáin says, “I see this Niall Boylan character doing the shock-jock stuff, punching down all the time,” referring to the radio presenter and immigration critic representing Independent Ireland, the party founded by TDs Michael Collins and Richard O’Donoghue.
Asked how she intends to vote, McCabe replies: “I’m torn. It wouldn’t be Sinn Féin because they’re populist. Fine Gael seem to make some [good] moves but they’re being too populist too. Fianna Fail? No. I like the leader of the Social Democrats. She seems more in tune.”
I have nieces and nephews trying to buy houses but they can’t because rents are so high. If you’re renting, you can’t afford to save enough to buy a house
— Lucan resident to Social Democrats' Sineád Gibney
The Social Democrats have a certain allure for Ó Ríordáin too. Between dashes to front doors, he expounds on his vision for a 32-county alignment of Labour with the Social Democrats, the Green Party and the SDLP.
“I find it frustrating that we just let Fine Gael run the country because we still keep emphasising the differences between us [on the left],” he says.
“I’m absolutely determined that the future can be a centre-left government. The selfish interests of ourselves, the Social Democrats and the Greens is getting a bit tiresome.”
On the other side of the capital city, the Social Democrats co-founder Catherine Murphy is accompanying her party’s European election candidate, Sineád Gibney, on a canvass in Lucan. Both women give Ó Ríordáin’s overture short shrift.
“What we’re trying to do is bring trust, because a lot of voters have lost trust in those parties,” says Gibney, who resigned as chief commissioner of the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission to contest the election.
“We’re creating a different political choice for people,” Murphy adds. “On the election trail, people talk about how limited the choice is.”
Gibney is in joint-eighth place in The Irish Times poll, on 5 per cent, alongside Niall Boylan.
This evening, the candidate is decked out in the Social Democrats colour: purple. A pin in her jacket says “More Mná”.
Her first call is to Mount Gandon, a pretty slope of houses named after the architect James Gandon who designed the Four Courts and Custom House, and whose family home was further up the hill.
“Housing is my absolute number one priority,” a retired civil servant tells Gibney.
“I have a daughter of 31 and her fiance living with me. They should be starting their own lives, but there are vulture funds buying up the developments and paying no tax.”
The woman at the next house takes up the refrain.
“I have nieces and nephews trying to buy houses but they can’t because rents are so high,” says the woman. “If you’re renting, you can’t afford to save enough to buy a house.”
Alison Cowzer, a founder of the East Coast Bakehouse biscuit-maker, but better known as a Dragon’s Den investor, is Gibney’s campaign manager. She shepherds the canvass team along the paths of Brookvale and Lucan Heights.
Gibney, who stood in Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown in the 2019 local elections and withdrew from the 2020 general election during the campaign when she landed the chief commissioner’s job, is an unfamiliar face to Lucan voters. She strives to find a bond.
When Dolores Collins divulges that she plays the piano, the candidate delightedly tells her: “I’m a piano-player too.” Her repertoire spans jazz, classical and anything by Tom Waits. Collins seems impressed. “I want to see somebody going to Europe who has dynamism and gets stuck in,” she says.
Gibney, who lives in the south Dublin neighbourhood of Blackrock, says that, if she becomes an MEP, she will “push for an EU-affordable housing programme” comprising initiatives that have proven successful in other countries, because “housing is not just an Irish issue – it’s an EU-wide crisis”. Having previously worked for Google Ireland as its head of corporate social responsibility, she cites the need for regulation of artificial intelligence as another key interest.
In contrast with the 2020 general election, health service issues such as trolley numbers and waiting lists are less often mentioned on the doorsteps than housing scarcity and migration.
“It really upsets me to see people in tents on the side of the road,” says Ann Murphy, who recently relocated to her native Dublin from Cork.
“I think it’s inhumane. If we’re taking people into our country, we should be doing better for them.”
Tatiana Popescu, who moved to Ireland from Moldova four years ago, apologises for her broken English. Her daughter Victoria, who is in third class in the local school, translates for her. The family is very happy in Dublin, the child says, as her little sister, Antonia, shyly watches from a swing their father has hung from a tree on the roadside.
Murphy says the feedback on the campaign is that people are concerned for asylum seekers and that immigration “is not coming up in a visceral, far-right way”. Gibney agrees but adds that she has experienced “some anti-migrant sentiment”.
Back in Swords, Ó Ríordáin is finishing his canvass to the drone of overhead aircraft coming and going at nearby Dublin Airport.
“Is now a good time to tell you we have called to Niall Boylan’s house?” Duncan Smith, Labour’s TD in the constituency, wonders. “He lives in this estate.”
“And not one person has mentioned him on the doorsteps,” the candidate replies. “I hope The Irish Times records that.”
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