The Taoiseach has branded Sinn Féin’s performance in the council elections as an “unmitigated disaster”, but has refused to call an early general election despite government parties performing better than expected.
It comes as the leader of Sinn Féin said she is “sorry” that her candidates did not perform better in the Republic’s local elections, amid criticism of the party’s strategy in the council races.
Mary Lou McDonald made the comments as vote counting continues for local and European elections.
Simon Harris said that the public did not want to “buy what Sinn Féin were selling”.
Mr Harris also accused Ms McDonald of making comments that were “quite insulting” to the Irish people when she tried to “second guess” them.
Speaking at the RDS count centre in south Dublin, Mr Harris said: “I was very disappointed to hear her comments in relation to, ‘maybe the people on this occasion didn’t really understand this’.
“The people of this country are sovereign.
“As I travelled around the country, I think the people knew exactly what Sinn Féin were selling, and they just didn’t want to buy it.”
He added: “I think what Sinn Féin needs to realise here is that the Irish people will see through the noise.
“The Irish people don’t believe they live in a failed state.
“The Irish people don’t believe in all of the negativity and the ‘rah rah rah’ but the Irish people want is pragmatic delivery.
“The Irish people do want change.
“They want credible change.
“That’s the sort of change I’m offering with Fine Gael and our coalition colleagues.
“This is the second local election that Mary Lou McDonald has had the honour of leading her party into, it’s the second local elections that have been an unmitigated disaster for them.
“They can carry out all the reviews they want, I don’t get distracted by their business.
“Leadership issues in Sinn Féin are a matter for Sinn Féin.”
Asked why he would not call a general election off the back of the results, Mr Harris said: “Because we’ve lots to do”.
Earlier, Ms McDonald said she was “disappointed” that more of her candidates were not elected.
Indications show there will be no Sinn Féin surge, while government parties do not appear to have suffered a major electoral blow.
Commentators have noted that Sinn Féin’s strategy in some constituencies had led to its vote being split too much.
Ms McDonald said: “Clearly, we didn’t get that right.”
She added: “It’s not just the number of the candidates, but the fact that in so many cases they were first-time candidates.”
Speaking at a count centre in Dublin, Ms McDonald said: “We have made some gains, they are modest, but they’re there.
“It hasn’t been our day.
“Clearly frustrations – anger indeed – with government policy on this occasion has translated into votes for independents and others.
“We have to now prepare ourselves for the general election, whenever that will happen.
“We’ll take time to reflect.”
Asked about whether the lacklustre result would affect her leadership, Ms McDonald said she “absolutely” committed to staying on in the role.
“I will lead this reflection and this process,” she said.
Irish voters have voted to elect almost 1,000 new councillors, 14 members to the European Parliament and, for the first time, one city’s citizens were asked to pick their mayor.
Despite winning 24.5% of first preference votes in a historic result in the 2020 general election, and hovering above 30% in opinion polls for a long time, the fate of many of Sinn Fein’s candidates is expected to depend on transfers.
However, Sinn Féin has made some gains on the 2019 election, where it won around 9% of first preference votes and 81 council seats out of 949.
Tánaiste Micheal Martin said that “the moral of the story” of the Irish elections was that polling should not be taken “as gospel”.
The Fianna Fáil leader said that there had been 15 national opinion polls, which had Fianna Fáil averaging at 16% and Sinn Féin averaging at 26.6%.
He said internet polling “has flaws” and does not capture “the dynamic” of an electoral campaign, or various other factors including personality, geography and policies.
Despite the strong showing for government parties so far, ministers stuck to the line that the coalition government would “go the full distance” to February or March before a general election is called.
Mr Martin said he would not be making the “error” of drawing conclusions from the local election results about a future general election, saying that it would have a different dynamic and cover different issues.
The full results of the European and local elections will take days to be finalised thanks to Ireland’s system of proportional representation which allows voters to rank every candidate in each race by order of preference.
The process means ballot papers are sorted and counted multiple times by hand.
Counting in the European elections began on Sunday morning and the results of the first tally will not be declared until after 10pm because of ongoing voting in other EU states.
Irish politics is currently dominated by a housing crisis, the cost of living and migration.
The coalition partnership of Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil and the Green Party has been battling criticism domestically and on the continent over other issues including climate action, agriculture policy and defence co-operation in the EU.
Political parties have been relying on opinion polls to judge voter sentiment for the previous four years since the last nationwide elections.
