Brian Feeney: Sinn Féin has to square the circle of housing and immigration in Dáil election

Yesterday’s bumper bonanza budget in the south only adds to Sinn Féin’s difficulties. They had a good ard fheis at the weekend. Mary Lou McDonald made a good speech and finance spokesman Pearse Doherty and housing guru Eoin Ó Broin weighed in with the party’s plans on taxation and shortage of affordable accommodation, or indeed any accommodation.

Then came yesterday’s giveaway budget with a double dunt of child benefit before Christmas, extra fuel allowance and roughly €2 billion in cost of living help. As a result, no-one remembers SF’s alternative budget last week. Furthermore, the timing of the budget knocked out any post-ard fheis boost a party normally expects after the free publicity of debates, resolutions and televised leader’s speech.

On the contrary, the next week will be devoted to discussion of the budget changes and whether, as claimed, every family will be more than €1,000 a year better off. Nobody is going to watch Doherty looking the gift horse in the mouth.

All the signs point to an election in November despite what Simon Harris says. All the signs indicate that the coalition is intent on buying the election in a mood of ebullient good will. In this climate of government surplus and largesse Sinn Féin is up against it to try to find a countervailing strategy.

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We had a glimpse of that strategy at the weekend. Mary Lou McDonald had already been trying it out in the Dáil. Blame Simon Harris is the theme. McDonald concentrated on Harris’s record as minister of health in 2018-20. At that time he was under fire from the scandal of erroneous cervical cancer smear results. The Republic’s chief medical officer said he reacted like “a frightened little boy running scared of headlines”. He also ran into the inevitable trouble about waiting lists.

McDonald castigated him for signing off on the long overdue children’s hospital, “the most expensive children’s hospital in the world” she called it, with spiralling costs and no date set for opening. The housing minister in 2019, Darragh O’Brien, said Harris was “clearly overwhelmed”. In late 2019 Harris survived a confidence vote in the Dáil and early in 2020 Leo Varadkar side-stepped another one Harris was going to lose by calling a general election.

All true, but the trouble with this line of attack is that, “that was then, this is now”, as the saying goes. Few people outside the Dáil care what Harris did five years ago. In the election campaign, which has effectively started, SF will be asked what its plans are for the future.

McDonald doubled down on reunification in her speech presenting details of a minister for reunification, a green paper and a citizens’ assembly. Polling shows this topic is popular with young people and Leo Varadkar’s recent interventions have given it added impetus. However, for most people housing and immigration are the main issues and for SF immigration has emerged as a hot potato.

The bad results in June’s local government elections were caused by a number of factors including fielding too many candidates, but two factors outweighed all others. Many voters deserted SF because of the party’s stance on immigration and other former supporters stayed at home. Polls and academic studies show immigration is far more important than housing for previous SF voters. For those who stayed with SF housing is more important than immigration. How to square that circle?

SF have hastily cobbled together a new immigration policy concentrating on consulting local communities before immigrants are housed. However, it may be too late to woo back those who switched away in June. SF is now the target of abuse in anti-immigrant protests; they’re not persuaded by the party’s new policy.

There’s another problem. Many people who turned away from Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil look to Independents rather than SF which in the last five years has come increasingly to sound like an establishment party. The Irish electorate has become exceptionally volatile and is likely to elect at least 20 Independents rather than opt for one of the three big parties, FG, SF or FF.

On present showing SF looks likely to come in second behind Fine Gael in an election scuppering its chances of government, for FG will coalesce with FF and/or Independents.

However, changes happen in an election campaign. Two straws SF cling to are that as many as 20% are undecided and up to half of voters only decide finally during the last week before polling day because, although aficionados find it difficult to believe, most people aren’t interested in politics.

After yesterday’s giveaway budget however, SF will worry that when they finally do make up their minds voters will ask themselves one fateful question: “Am I better off with this government?”