The result of the Dublin-Central by-election is highly important, as it will reveal if support for the immigration critical movement “is real or not”, said Cllr. Malachy Steenson, as he canvassed through the inner city this week.
Walking through North Strand alongside campaign volunteers, with a Gript journalist embedded to observe, Steenson described the election as a test of whether the rise in immigration-sceptical politics represented a genuine electoral movement or simply online momentum.
The Councillor, who was elected to Dublin City Council in 2024, is running on a platform focused on immigration, housing, public services and cost of living pressures. Over the course of several hours on the doors, those themes surfaced repeatedly in conversations with residents.
Steenson was recognised constantly while canvassing, with many passers-by stopping to greet him by name.
“Ah, Malachy,” one woman shouted from across the street.
“I always vote for you number 1, all the time!”
Even among those who disagreed with him politically, Steenson said the atmosphere had changed noticeably compared to previous campaigns, and one female campaign staffer said canvassing had become far less hostile.
“It’s been a big difference from the locals to now,” she said.
“We were getting called all kinds of names the last time. It’s completely different now.”
Asked why she thought attitudes had shifted, she pointed to recent comments from Taoiseach Micheál Martin linking homelessness pressures to immigration.
“I think a lot more people are after waking up,” she said.
“Now the Government are agreeing with what Malachy said and jumping on the bandwagon.”
“But will it benefit them? I doubt it very much, because Malachy’s been saying this since 2022. But now it’s seen as ‘safe’ to say it, because it’s not just us saying it. It’s even people like Micheál Martin.”
Immigration arose organically on the doors throughout the evening. At one house, a resident asked Steenson directly: “When are you closing the borders?”
“As soon as I get in,” Steenson joked, adding: “I’ll close the border to the Southside as well.”
“Ah good, we never wanted them up here anyway,” the man laughed, before turning serious.
“You name a place where a Dublin man can get a job in Dublin.”
“I can’t, unless he works for himself,” Steenson replied.
“There you go,” the man responded.
Gript put it to Steenson that Sinn Féin candidate Cllr. Janice Boylan had said immigration was not emerging regularly on the doors during her own canvass.
“If that’s true, it’s probably because people wouldn’t bother raising it with her,” he said.
On Gerry Hutch’s controversial immigration comments that illegal immigrants should be interned, Steenson said that these remarks by Hutch were only designed to generate headlines and publicity.
“Although I’ve no difficulty interning people, and this State has never had any difficulty interning people,” he added.
Steenson argued that immigration remained tied to nearly every major issue being discussed during the campaign.
“The media want you to think it’s gone off the boil,” he said.
“But none of the problems we have can be solved without solving the immigration problem.
“You can’t solve the housing problem without solving the immigration problem, because you can’t continue to increase demand. You have to take the stopper out of the bath at some stage, or turn off the tap – one or the other.”
He said Government parties were now attempting to adopt tougher rhetoric after years of dismissing criticism.
“They tried to steal our clothes,” he said, referring to the immigration-critical protest groups which he said used to be criticised by the main political parties.
Asked whether recent Government concessions on immigration pressures made him feel vindicated, Steenson rejected the suggestion.
“I wouldn’t say vindicated is the right word,” he said.
“Because we’ve always been right. They’re accepting now that we were right, but they knew all along that we were right.
“They were just denying it for their own political reasons.”
Asked if he was concerned recent Government immigration pivots might placate some voters enough to win back support, he said he wasn’t.
“The people who’d be placated by that level of measure wouldn’t have been voting for us anyway,” he said, adding that people could “see through it”.
While most interactions were positive and friendly, there was some pushback – one man stepped out from his house after spotting the canvassers approaching.
“Go away, he’s a racist,” he said.
One volunteer asked him how Steenson was racist.
“My wife is an immigrant! He’d deport her!” the man replied.
“No he wouldn’t,” the canvasser said, asking: “Give me one thing he’s said that’s racist.”
The man paused, muttered briefly to himself, and returned indoors.
The canvass frequently drifted beyond immigration and into broader questions about the changing character of the constituency itself.
Passing through one street, Steenson pointed to what he described as growing gentrification in the locality.
“Gentrification is changing the nature of the area,” he said.
“It’s doing almost as much damage, in some ways, as immigration is.”
He laughed: “We have immigrants from the southside coming up now.”
One campaign staffer gestured towards a nearby café.
“Once you start seeing the coffee shops pop up, you know you’re doomed,” he joked.
“Yeah,” Steenson replied.
“We’d be more tea drinkers.”
Later, he pointed towards a “North Strand welcomes all” mural featuring a transgender flag.
Steenson claimed the mural had been funded by Dublin City Council and installed by Leftwing activists in response to anti-immigration “Says No” protests held in the area with Irish tricolours.
The conversation soon turned to the political make-up of Dublin Central, where Sinn Féin, Labour and the Social Democrats currently hold the constituency’s three occupied Dáil seats.
Steenson argued that many Leftwing parties no longer represented traditional working class politics.
“They want to decriminalise drugs in the most drug destroyed area of the country, and they want to give your kid a needle to bang up a bit of gear,” he said.
“Why is that? Probably because they’re banging coke up their nose at the weekends. And that’s the biggest problem with the liberal Left. They only want to legalise drugs because they don’t want to get done for having a bag of coke.”
He also criticised Sinn Féin’s stance on immigration, claiming the party had alienated some long-time supporters.
“If Sinn Féin had supported us from the start, they would be in Government now,” he said.
“Their place in Government has been lost because of immigration. They wonder why people call Sinn Féin ‘traitors’ in areas like this. It’s because they always believed that Sinn Féin had their back.”
One exchange later in the canvass reflected the constituency’s political divide.
As Steenson discussed landlords and Sinn Féin, two Sinn Féin supporting women sitting in a nearby car interrupted.
“What was that about Sinn Féin?” one woman asked.
“You’re a landlord yourself. You’re giving out about landlords but you’re one.”
“Ah get out of it, go administer British rule,” Steenson shot back.
“Is that what 3,000 people died for?”
After the exchange, he defended his ownership of property.
“I get no money from the properties I own,” he said.
“I’ve a house that my daughter lives in, the office my sister lives in. But the Left despise success, unless you get it by being the CEO of an NGO.”
As the canvass drew on into the evening, Steenson said the campaign itself reflected how much political debate around immigration had changed in recent years. He said that whether or not he got elected, his primary objective in politics was to change the narrative, and he feels he’s largely achieved that.
The Dublin Central by-election is being contested by candidates from Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil, Sinn Féin, Labour, the Social Democrats, People Before Profit, the Green Party, Aontú, and a range of Independent groupings. Immigration, housing, public services and cost of living pressures have emerged as recurring themes throughout the campaign.