The debate about housing policy in the general election should not come down to what party “can shout the biggest number” when promising how many houses they plan to build in government, Taoiseach Simon Harris has said.
Speaking hours before heformally asked for the Dáil to be dissolved, Mr Harris rejected the suggestion Fine Gael were at a disadvantage due to the large number of incumbent TDs who were not running again.
Mr Harris said he hoped the campaign would not descend into “tit for tat” exchanges and rows that often dominate day-to-day political debate. “We don’t need the general election campaign to be like Leaders’ Questions in the Dáil,” he said.
The election of Donald Trump as the next president of the United States vindicated previous decisions by the Government to put money away into funds for the future, to guard against turbulence in the Irish economy, Mr Harris said.
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Europe needed to be prepared for the possible “transatlantic trade shock” of a second Trump presidency, he said. Mr Harris was speaking in Budapest, where he attended a dinner with other EU leaders on Thursday evening, before a further informal leaders summit on Friday morning.
From there Mr Harris flew home to Dublin, where he travelled to Áras an Uachtaráin and formally asked President Michael D Higgins to dissolve the Dáil. Voting in the general election will take place on November 29th, following a three-week campaign.
Speaking to reporters in Hungary, Mr Harris rattled through several core policies Fine Gael would touch on during the election. The State would need to take a “much more interventionist approach” in the childcare sector, to increase the number of places available to parents, he said.
On immigration, the Taoiseach said while Ireland had benefited from inward migration, people wanted to know there were rules in place, as part of what he called “a much more efficient, fair and firm” system.
Given housing is expected to be one of the dominating issues of the campaign, Mr Harris said the conversation should not be limited to “who can shout the biggest number about the number of houses they’re going to build”. There needed to be an interrogation of how parties credibly planned to hit housing targets they set in their manifestos, he said.
“There hasn’t been an outright majority for any party in Ireland since the 1970s I think, and I don’t expect that to change in this election,” he said.
While Fine Gael is leading opinion polls heading into the election, 18 of the party’s 35 TDs elected in 2020 are not standing again. Mr Harris said he did not “buy” the argument that incumbency was the “be all and end all” in Irish politics.
The party was running many candidates who had experience outside of politics, he said. “So while some of the names might be new to you and to those of us who operate maybe in the Leinster House and political bubble, they’re not new in their communities,” he said.
“When I travel around the country, people are looking for new blood, new energy, new ideas, to serve in Dáil Éireann. I will of course be making the case to the Irish people in the days and weeks ahead that Fine Gael offers that mix of experience and energy.”
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