Perhaps the only bigger question than when election will be held is… when will we be told?
There’s a question that has been swirling around seemingly endlessly within Irish political conversations for the past while, with only heightened frequency as the obligatory post-Budget brouhaha dies down; a question, though eager for the answer, the public is no doubt tired of asking – when, oh when, will the General Election be held?
Indeed, the (relative) uncertainty surrounding which side of New Year’s polling day will fall, appears to be something even the politicians themselves have grown sick of – or as independent TD Mattie McGrath would put it (and indeed did put it while speaking in the Dáil last week), something that at this point, has “people driven demented”.
Prior to more recent days, Taoiseach Simon Harris had been able to dismiss much of the pressure to hold talks with Coalition party leaders about the date of the election, by citing the big ‘obstacle’ of the Budget as the more pressing priority.
“My position is that the election will be in due course, that it’s my prerogative to call the election, that I will do it in consultation with the other leaders, and that I want the Government to go full term,” he said at the time… while also repeatedly refusing to rule out the possibility of an election taking place this year.
Given Harris’s comments, the arrival of the Budget was always going to spark renewed pressure for such a talk between Coalition partners to occur and for an official decision to be reached. And of course, the actual announcement itself only added fuel to the fire that despite Harris’s full term assertions, a 2024 election could be on the mind. After all, though any last-year-of-term Budget is going to be susceptible to accusations of being a “pre-election Budget” – that is, a Budget made with the express priority of shinnying up the party/parties in power right in time for polling day – such accusations only hold more water when so much of the reaction to the Budget in question has been littered with critiques of its “unfocused over-spending” and allocation of once-off measures over more long-term solutions.
But even despite such critiques, the public will indeed see benefits from this recently-announced Budget that would be fresher on the mind were an election to take place next month, as opposed to next spring. And that, potentially at least, could be a big item in the ‘2024 election’ pros list for the Government – but of course it’s far from being the most major potential-early-indication-indicator circulating in the media at the moment.
Recent days have seen multiple scandals erupt surrounding the Government’s main opposition party, Sinn Féin, from the Michael McMonagle controversy to Brian Stanley’s resignation. In fact, it appears that for the Coalition partners, with every passing day the argument for a speedier election is fortified by the latest Sinn Féin scandal to hit the broadsheets. Even the most earnest attempts at accountability and reform-professing from the main opposition party in response to these scandals would be hindered by an election held so hot on the heels of such revelations, while the shock and outrage is fresh and without adequate time for the full scope of things to be addressed.
Taoiseach Harris has insisted that the Sinn Féin scandal is “not a factor of (his) consideration” in calling a General Election, though his assessment that “the people of Ireland were duped” by the main opposition party is far from a characterisation – whatever its actual accuracy/non-accuracy – that paints the opposition the way they’d like pre-election.
Sinn Féin want to be talking about housing, about whatever failures of the Government we’ve seen over this term, about their plans and priorities, about all the stuff that earned them the surge in popularity we’d been beginning to see just a little while back. But of course, the need to address these recent scandals is imminent, and cannot be forgone in place of playing pre-election politics.
For the big two in the Coalition partnership, there is the shared pros of a generous Budget package and Sinn Féin’s fall in the public eye, but the pre-election inter-Coalition cracks are beginning to form too. This is not helped with Harris’s personal popularity putting Fine Gael at about 25% in opinion polls, with Fianna Fáil at 20%; and recent comments from Tánaiste Micheál Martin about how in the past, Coalition leaders once “communicated directly and not through the media”.
As such, further questions arise over whether if Harris indeed were to suggest an early election, would Martin be game? Harris does of course withhold the right to go straight to the President without the approval of his Coalition partners and ask for an early election, but it does not seem like a very Harris move.
Ultimately, the seemingly endlessly swirling question of when the election will be held remains (at the time of writing at least). For an answer, we will simply have to wait and see.
At this point, perhaps the only question being asked more in politics conversations at the moment than when will the election be held is: when can we expect to find out?
