In the Irish section of the Times of London we are told by Gary Murphy after Catherine Connolly’s Presidential win:
“After they were done murdering Galway Bay, Connolly was joined on stage by Luke Flanagan, the independent MEP, Paul Murphy, the People Before Profit TD, and the leaders of the Dail’s main left-wing parties, Mary Lou McDonald of Sinn Fein, Ivana Bacik of Labour, Holly Cairns of the Social Democrats, and Roderic O’Gorman, the sole Green TD.”
Halloween comes early.
Murphy continues: “There is no doubt, however, that the picture of the party leaders with the presumptive president had at least the look of an alternative government.”
If this doesn’t strike the fear of God into every moderate middle – ground, middle – class voter then I don’t know what will.
As I have said before I think of myself as an outsider to Irish politics but this gives me an advantage. There are a lot of things the Irish voter just accepts as ‘normal’ when they shouldn’t be.
The parties on the right need to get their shit together or we are staring at a leftwing government. I won’t use the terms far–left or hard–left for now, but there are certainly elements of that. They are now motivated by this win. A leftwing government would be an absolute disaster for Ireland, as it is for every other country they are ever elected in.
And they will actually sell it to you as something new and inclusive and open and modern. They will tell you that electing a 68 year woman as President is a win for ‘modern Ireland.’ They’ll get the young one with the swishy hair Holly Cairns who looks great on telly on your telly box telling you how they are going to make Ireland “fairer.”
Do you know what fairer means to the Social Democrats? You and your partner work for longer and hand over more and more of your income to the state. How fair is a tax burden of close to 47%? Not very if you ask me.
The leftwing coalition will also make out how very nice they are, just lovely people with lovely views (unlike those nasty Catholics). Dig deeper and you will find a lot of hostility and much of their politics is based on resentment towards the British (SF), the Americans (Labour) and towards Israel (all of them.)
But none of those countries are the reason why your children cannot buy a home, that the Children’s Hospital still isn’t built, that your tax burden is gargantuan, or that inflation has nearly doubled the price of your weekly shop. And none of those countries are the reason why many hotels including City West have been converted into IPAS centres.
The people of Ireland are just normal, everyday people. They don’t want crazy woke policies but nor do they want to row back on any of the changes that have been made over the last 20 years. They just want to have a family, own an ordinary house, go to work and be adequately compensated for that work. It’s not much to ask. They would rather not have their local hotel converted into an IPAS centre especially if they live in rural Ireland. They like to travel and drink out of plastic bottles without having to pay twice over for it. This shouldn’t be hard.
In the Irish Times on Saturday while the results are coming in John Collinson co founder and President of Stripe wrote in the Irish Times about the challenges that face Ireland. “Since I was born in 1990, the Republic’s population has grown from 3.5 million to 5.5 million, a faster growth rate than any other EU member state except tiny Malta and Luxembourg. The number of people in employment has increased 137 per cent in that time. And the rate of growth keeps accelerating. Net migration since 2021 is 88 per cent higher than in the previous three years.”
“To put it simply: we have not built enough homes or infrastructure or sufficiently developed our energy system to keep up with the radical population growth we’ve seen in my lifetime.” He continues, “I have found that leadership often doesn’t mean setting grand, sweeping plans but instead resolving nuanced trade-offs between competing priorities. By creating a multitude of agencies each with specific remits, we’ve created a system that’s institutionally incapable of making trade-offs.”
Trade – offs. That is what life and indeed government is about: trade – offs. But in Ireland there are so many vested interests that trade – offs can’t be made. Or worse, if someone tries to explain what the trade – off is, what the opportunity cost is, then the socialists backed by their supporters in the media will label you as fascist or Thatcherite or Trumpian or Farage.
They will pretend that there are no trade-offs when your local hotel is turned into an IPAS centre, it must be done because of human rights and the locals must just suck it up. If they object then they are Trumpian or Farage.
You know the best thing about Thatcher and Trump? They won elections. And if the polls are to be believed Farage is on course to do the same in the UK. But the vested interests, the socialists and the mainstream media would have you believe that these elected leaders who enjoyed or enjoy the support of the middle – class are extremists, off their rockers.
So let’s just cut to the chase here. The State in Ireland is getting too big which results in the crushing tax burden. The fact we have two finance departments (Department of Finance and Department of Public Expenditure And Reform) just sums it. The first thing that needs to be done is join these two departments and abolish funding for all NGOs.
If someone else wants to fund the Irish Council of Civil Liberties to take legal cases directly against the interests of the taxpayer that’s up to them. It is not something that the taxpayer should be funding. Vat should be reduced and income tax cut. The guiding principle for this Department should be, What would Thatcher do? If she wouldn’t have done it, then it doesn’t get done.
There should be one department responsible for housing, instead of all the following: the Department of Housing, local authorities, An Coimisiún Pleanála, the Office of the Planning Regulator, the Land Development Agency and the Housing Agency. Opportunities to object to infrastructure builds should be seriously curtained as well as planning appeals. The focus should be on building high density housing, that isn’t vile. Both Victorian and Georgian architecture is high density yet beautiful. It can be done. The guiding principle of this Department should be, what would Prince Albert do? Prince Albert was ‘big on housing’, especially for the Victorian working class labourer. He also got the Great Exhibition built. That man knew how to get things built, we need to channel that spirit. (Albert College Park on the Northside is named after him.)
On immigration, if deportation orders are issued then that person should be detained until the appeal (which should be 14 days) is finalised and if it fails, he is deported. We should not have people who are issued deportation orders running around places like City West willy nilly. There should be a limit on the number of people granted asylum every year and if the EU has a problem with that, then renegotiate the EU Migration pact. You can name that Department the Department of Trump, to save the Irish Times the trouble. It shall be Trumpian in outlook, the guiding principle being, what would Trump do? If he wouldn’t do it, it doesn’t get done.
And on and on we go. The licence fee should be optional, Graham Linehan will be in charge of the Department of Free Speech. The guiding principle there is, what would George Orwell do?
Then there will be my favourite the Department of Not Our Problem. This Department will issue statements about things when the shrieking left – wing journalists come knocking on the door demanding statements of outrage. Gaza – not our problem. Bloke wakes up in the morning and wants to use the ladies loos – not our problem. Hundreds of thousands of people want to move here from lands far away – not our problem. Manchester United is now bad at football – not our problem. People of Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council are angry about something – not our problem.
BBC Sounds not available in Ireland – our problem and we will negotiate a new deal to reinstate that service.
There we are. Go opinion poll that stuff to actual voters and I bet it will do well, despite what Fintan O’Toole tells you. People on the right need to get over themselves and form a proper right of centre party. I’ve done a fair bit of the policy work for you. It’s 2025. I don’t care about what happened 100 years ago.