This general election campaign is in danger of descent into farce. That danger is real. The people of Ireland are not fools. They know that a general election is about deciding which people and which policies will govern us for the next five years and where the balance of power in the next Dáil will lie.
Instead of competing on issues which really matter to voters, the campaign has started on a very different basis. Parties that formed the outgoing government are squabbling among themselves on budgetary matters just days after guillotining through the Finance Act 2024 together – a measure that is supposed to decide on taxation policy for the first year of the next government’s life.
Realising just how unpopular the Greens have become, both Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael sources persuaded newspaper columnists last weekend that they were both looking at the Labour party as potential coalition partners. But Labour will be lucky to elect half a dozen TDs on current poll ratings and may well end up with just four. The larger parties’ ploy of looking to Labour is insincere and designed solely to signal to voters that they do not want to be associated with the Greens anymore. That is a measure of the cynicism prevailing among the would-be coalition partners.
On housing policy, lessons learned have been very quickly forgotten. The key to addressing our severe housing shortage is increasing supply. Measures aimed at subsidising first time purchasers by using the Apple money will only result in further house price inflation. A supposedly temporary rent-freeze for three years will simply drive resources away from providing private rented accommodation.
Further restrictions on the rights of lessors to recover possession will simply reduce the supply of rented homes for lessees. The idea of solving the housing shortage by creating a state building company is simply daft. Has anyone thought through the likely productivity of state employees in the construction sector? Likewise, amending our constitution to give the judiciary and the legal profession a role in delivery of housing by litigation is utterly misconceived; there is literally nothing in the Constitution stopping our legislators and ministers from delivering housing or from implementing the recommendations of the 1973 Kenny report.
And when I see massive targets announced for new homebuilding, I ask when and where and by whom such targets are to be achieved. If we don’t use radically improved compulsory purchase powers to acquire undeveloped zoned land, under-used brownfield and derelict sites, new housing density policies, and guaranteed delivery of associated infrastructure, these targets cannot be achieved.
A wise and experienced retired senior civil servant recently gave me his view on the proposal to create a Department of Infrastructure. He said it would take the best part of a year to assemble and get working. Departments would send their weaker and expendable personnel to run it.
If it took responsibility for such diverse projects as road building, railway development, Metrolink, electricity networks, housing development, Shannon Dublin water supply, the national maternity hospital, it would simply fail, he said.
Instead, he said that creating a policy delivery oversight unit in the heart of government similar to the model adopted by Tony Blair would be far more effective. That was the approach suggested by the Housing Commission – and quickly rejected by the housing department.
Throwing shapes and promising new agencies and new bodies is the electoral equivalent of the Book of Genesis. It is magical thinking. It calls to mind the comedian’s quip: “In the beginning there was nothing, and the Lord said, “Let there be light”. There was still nothing. But you could see it a lot better.”
It isn’t just a case of campaigning in poetry but governing in prose. We need coherent stable government supported by an ideologically compatible majority in Dáil Éireann. It needs to address issues such as transport, energy, housing, immigration, EU and foreign policy, taxation, expenditure control, childcare, climate change and security from a shared coherent ideology and set of values.
Instead of sniping at each other, the erstwhile civil war parties need to be straight with the people. Competition between Harris and Martin to be next Taoiseach is far less important than their ability to unite in governing coherently in the interests of the people. Jockeying between them for media advantage is a turn off.
When you look at the left in Irish politics, you have to ask why there are separate parties such as Labour and the Social Democrats? Does anyone understand why? Why is the left led by Sinn Féin, a party which is itself led by an undemocratic power structure dominated by Belfast? What does People Before Profit really stand for? A Marxist Ireland?
It’s also time for the centre right to stop squabbling and to demonstrate that it can govern coherently and effectively. Voters may not forgive the phony wars that have ignited this last week.