There are a great many problems with the Irish electoral system, but perhaps the greatest problem with it is that used effectively by a small party, it can be effectively used to facilitate genuine extremism. There are few better examples of this than the current row between the Green Party and Ryanair.
The problem for Ryanair is a pretty simple one: It favours the expansion of Dublin Airport to keep up with the growth of Ireland’s population and economy. The Green Party, however, would like to cap the expansion of Dublin Airport at its present level, in order to curb the impact of climate change. Ryanair points out, entirely correctly, that an increase in demand while supply stays at a fixed level will inevitably mean higher prices for people who want to fly. Grand, says the Green Party, because that will discourage flying and save the planet.
This, as one might expect in a row involving Michael O’Leary, has now descended into a war of words on social media:
Time to wake up @Ryanair, there's a climate emergency going on.
2019 – Ryanair joins 9 coal power stations in top 10 carbon-emitting companies in Europe.
2023 – Ryanair emissions 20% higher than 2019. https://t.co/eMKLoHtzx6 pic.twitter.com/A7eHSN9efo
— Green Party Ireland (@greenparty_ie) February 7, 2024
This is where our beloved single transferable vote electoral system comes in.
The Green Party, to attain power and successfully block the expansion of Irish airport capacity, does not need anything even close to a majority of the vote from the public. In fact, the dynamics are simple: Even if 90% of the public agree with Ryanair and O’Leary, 10% of the public voting Green at the next election would immediately make the Greens kingmakers in any Government talks, allowing them to block airport expansion and save the planet come what may. This is why the row suits the Greens just fine: They may find themselves on the wrong end of public opprobrium, but as long as a decent minority agrees with them, being on the wrong end of the issue with help rather than hurt them electorally.
In most democracies, it might not be this simple. Ireland, though, has long been dominated by two political parties famous for allowing themselves to be dominated by the ideology of whatever small party gets into Government with them. When it was the progressive democrats, Ireland had the most objectively right-wing Government in its history. Now that it’s the Greens, we have a Government that would happily hobble the economy to save the planet – even if the rest of the planet is less keen.
An electoral system that persistently gives disproportionate power to small parties is probably not, I’d argue, a very good one. But we’re stuck with it, because Irish people love it for some reason.
Why then, does the row also suit Ryanair? The answer to that is to do with something called issue salience.
One reason smaller parties persistently accumulate such power is because their voters tend to be more motivated on a particular issue – even if they’re in a minority – than the majority of voters who oppose them are. That is to say, if you are a Green voter, you might live and breathe the fight over Dublin Airport, whereas if you are a Fine Gael voter you probably barely even notice it, even though you’d prefer if the airport expanded.
In this sense, Ryanair’s objective is not to get the Greens to change their minds, but to get the rest of the public who oppose Green Policy in this area to wake up a bit and demand that their politicians fight their corner. The more the public are talking about this, the harder it will be for the Greens to get their preferences through cabinet.
Will it work? There are obvious reasons why it would and should, for both sides. For the Greens, and their small cohort of voters, there can be very few more satisfying things than to be seen to be taking on Europe’s biggest airline and thwarting their dastardly plans to put even more aircraft into Irish skies. This is why you vote Green, if you do, and they’re certainly delivering. In fact, there are very few parties who are more deadly serious about delivering on their promises than the Greens – a fact they get little credit for because most of those promises end up being widely unpopular with the electorate at large.
For Ryanair, and indeed the rest of the airline industry, the way to beat the Greens is to drive up the salience and importance of the issue for the voters at large by explicitly connecting Green policy to higher costs and longer waiting times at the airport. The more voters get actively annoyed about this, the more chance there is of Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil discovering a spine.
The difficulty for Ryanair though is that I’m not sure they’re aware of just how deeply the Greens have managed to embed their worldview in both the Irish civil service and the Irish establishment more widely. O’Leary is betting that the Government won’t pursue a policy that is deeply unpopular with the public. He should probably talk to some immigration-is-too-high activists. They’ll set him straight.