The Politics Fix

A week of clearing the decks at breathtaking speed in readiness for an election

Your essential end-of-week politics catch up: Row breaks out over housing figures and Frances Black gets backing from all parties for her Occupied Territories Bill

It will be a major surprise if, when Taoiseach Simon Harris calls the election, that the polling date is not actually November 29th. Photograph: John Thys/AFP
It will be a major surprise if, when Taoiseach Simon Harris calls the election, that the polling date is not actually November 29th. Photograph: John Thys/AFP
Harry McGee's picture
Harry McGee
Fri Oct 25 2024 - 18:09

Story of the Week

It was a week of clearing the decks in readiness for an event and a date that have not officially been announced yet but everybody in politics knows. It will be a major surprise if, when Taoiseach Simon Harris calls the election, that the polling date is not actually November 29th and it is not actually called on November 7th or 8th. The Taoiseach was said to be unhappy at Green Party leader Roderic O’Gorman jumping the gun last weekend and borrowing Harris’s sole prerogative to name the date. If he was he didn’t show it on Monday when he was all smiles (perhaps through gritted teeth) when asked the question.

The Government had nine pieces of priority legislation to get through the Dáíl this week and they got them through at breathtaking speed, applying the guillotine with a relish last seen in Paris in 1789. They got five Bills completed in five hours on Wednesday, a process that would normally take months. They included the contentious hate crime legislation (now much circumscribed) and the Seanad reform legislation that opens up the franchise for the six university seats to almost a million graduates. As of now, there are only four Bills left to go, including the key Finance Bill.

It was a clearing of the decks, too, for Sinn Féin. The party needed to put the recent scandals and crises behind it. After a lot of humming and hawing, Mary Lou McDonald made a full apology to the 16-year-old teenager sent inappropriate texts by former senator Niall Ó Donghaile. Essentially, the party has a month left now to try to pivot the debate to its key strengths and recoup some of the territory it has lost.

Bust up

One of the biggest rows of the week involved Sinn Féin but for the first time in a while, it was actually about social issues. Its finance spokesman Pearse Doherty and Minister for Housing Darragh O’Brien got into some “fractious exchanges” in the Dáil on Thursday over housing figures. O’Brien claimed that close to 40,000 new homes will be built this year, well north of the Housing for All targets of 33,450.

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Doherty claimed the Government will miss its housing targets “by a country mile”. He also accused the Minister of “lying”. When Ceann Comhairle Seán Ó Fearghaíl demanded he withdraw the remark, he softened it to “deliberately misleading”.

The row was based on CSO figures for the third quarter which suggested the overall figures could be shy of the target. O’Brien insisted that the return in the fourth quarter would have a substantial yield. The CSO has reported 21,634 new homes being delivered this year to the end of September compared with 22,356 in the first nine months of last year, he said.

He called Doherty an “angry man”. Doherty responded in kind.

Daly moves constituency

So Clare Daly has decided to change from her old constituency of Dublin North (now Dublin Fingal East) and move to Dublin Central to try to win a seat in the four-seat constituency. Daly and her close collaborator Mick Wallace lost their European seats during the summer. It could partly have been attributed to their political positioning on Russia and China, as well as visits to some very questionable states.

Now she is back and challenging in the home patch of Mary Lou McDonald and of Paschal Donohoe. Daly has been endorsed by a number of local independent politicians, including former TD Maureen O’Sullivan, Cllr Cieran Perry and former MEP Patricia McKenna.

Banana skin

The last Dáil vote on Wednesday night was a procedural one, but boy is it controversial. It was for the Dáil to adopt (for future consideration) the report (and that does not mean approve it) on assisted dying that was agreed by the majority of an Oireachtas committee. The majority recommendation was that assisted dying be allowed in a number of very limited circumstances, all involving irreversible terminal illness at the later stages.

However, the issue divided the committee. There was a minority report. It has also divided Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil. Both parties allowed a free vote and several very prominent Ministers (Simon Coveney, Peter Burke and Norma Foley) and former ministers voted against.

However the vote was easily passed as all the Opposition parties supported it.

This issue will return in the 34th Dáil and will be the subject of much contention and controversy.

Winners and losers

Winner:

Frances Black. The Independent Senator has got all parties, including the Government parties, to back the Occupied Territories Bill, which she published in 2018. It will mean a ban on all goods and services from illegal Israeli settlements. While the Government admitted it would not get the legislation through in this Dáil term, Black believes it will be passed very early in the next Dáil term, because there is now unanimous backing for it.

Loser:

Eugene Miurphy. The affable Roscommon Senator has been eager for another tilt at the Dáil since losing his seat narrowly in 2020. However, he was beaten for the slot in the Fine Gael selection convention for Roscommon-Galway by Castlerea GP Martin Daly. For some weeks now Murphy has been making huge efforts to be added to the ticket, arguing there was a need for a second candidate in north Roscommon. Sadly, for him, he received the disappointing news from party HQ this week that the one-candidate strategy will remain.

The Big Read

Jennifer Bray has an in-depth look at the war-rooms of the big parties and the people who are making the decisions in each party’s HQ. Cormac McQuinn is examining Sinn Féin’s candidate selection quandaries.

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Now that it is confirmed there will be a general election this year, The Irish Times politics team can finally unleash their predictions – or should that be possible future outcomes – of which candidates and parties will emerge victorious from some of the most competitive constituencies in the State. Listen to Inside Politics on GE24.

GE24: The battleground constituencies

Listen | 52:55