Right wing politics in Ireland has changed utterly in the past two weeks.
Before the fuel protests rocked the government, political movements on the right were (rightly of course) built around the IPAS, open borders and other mass migration issues.
As the last two election cycles showed, these can be very difficult issues to get votes on. When a right wing candidate comes to the door during canvassing and goes straight to migration, Irish people – who are open-hearted by nature, and indoctrinated through education and the national media to be extremely pro-mass immigration – will find your message ‘icky’. Particularly in middle class areas. As such, nationalist parties who ran on narrow, immigration-focused platforms performed poorly with no party breaking 1% of overall first preference votes.
Despite polls consistently showing high support for more restrictive immigration policies, in and of itself, running on immigration control as a single-issue party or individual did not prove to be a vote winner.
Enter fuel protests.
This week Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael took a battering from their working class voter base when Micheál Martin refused to engage with non-Union protestors. Just as Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael have leveraged the government-funded NGO sector in matters of social policy to give the veneer of public consultation surrounding contentious policy directions in recent years – from the National Action Plan against Racism which embeds positive discrimination in public sector hiring, to the Zero Tolerance – Third National Strategy on Domestic, Sexual and Gender-Based Violence which politicised the murder of Ashling Murphy to enact anti-misogyny education in primary and secondary school curricula – so too has the government relied upon Union insiders to force their most contentious economic agendas through without industrial disruption or civil unrest. This was exemplified by union actions during the era of austerity. It’s a neat racket. NGOs and Unions act as a wedge between the government and the great unwashed electorate and in return, fabulous funding, political access and in the latter’s case, plum jobs in state and semi-state bodies await.
This week however, business as usual was upended. Micheál Martin refused to engage with non-union protest leaders, Justice Minister Jim O’Callaghan attempted to dismiss grassroots anger entirely by absurdly referring to Tommy Robinson as an outside manipulator. Leaders of non-union protestors were humiliatingly turned away from government negotiations on April 10th and the next day, Gardai with army vehicle backup deployed pepper spray on protestors and physically removed others from vehicles at Whitegate, Ireland’s only refinery.
Rather than simply engage in dialogue with non-union protesters, the government responded with force and in doing so, they lost the support of many hauliers, farmers and related tradesmen who had been lifelong Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael voters. During a party meeting on the 13th, Fianna Fáil TDs are said to have told Micheál Martin that lifelong constituents had contacted them to say they’d never vote for the party again and that the leader himself was ‘out of touch’.
Importantly, these disaffected voters appear to have broken right instead of defaulting to Sinn Fein who have long abandoned the working class for immigrants and the Social Justice middle class crowd. Over the weekend, several videos circulated on social media of Sinn Fein representatives being loudly booed and cleared out of demonstrations and on April 12th Independent Ireland tweeted out that their membership webpage had crashed due to new signups.
The right then has added hauliers and farmers to their ranks. Instead of being a largely single issue movement focused on immigration, the emerging Irish right is now a coalition. Those with legal immigration concerns, IPAS protestors, hauliers and farmers are up for grabs and that gives ample room for winning messaging on doorsteps.
And there is another key constituency to be won over. 40% of all working people under 35 still live in their childhood bedrooms. Leftists can’t offer them a way out because their economic platforms are built on more government intervention in housing, more social housing, more migrant housing – all of which eat into private housing stock. Independent Ireland in particular are well placed here to win over voters with their economic platform that focuses on tax breaks and cutting red tape to spur building projects rather than direct interference in existing stock. The party would do well to tap into those young people still living at home. It is a large cohort.
Any party that would promise to tax vulture funds out of Ireland, link their slimy profiteering to Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael’s disastrous post-bailout handling of the housing market would free up existing stock for young working people to move out of home. Crucially, they must promise to reduce legal migration by pruning the FDI economy to suit Ireland’s youth graduate profile. That means weaning off of US tech multinationals who overwhelmingly hire from abroad and fundamentally shifting how we engage with FDI – that is, it must serve Irish needs and not the other way around.
Most importantly, any emerging multi-coalition right wing party must inspire. It must not simply be a pushback against the left’s political dominance in Ireland. It must offer a coherent and inspiring vision for a new Ireland. Paint an economic and social picture of Ireland that will inspire them to stay – a place where they will be prioritised. The only way to do that is to promote indigenous industry. Promise tax cuts on business startups and on VAT to domestic businesses across industries, and fill the gap in tax by diverting wasted billions from radical left activist NGOs, IPAS accommodation and funding national media outlets. In 2025 alone, €1.2 billion was spent on IPAS accommodation. Over €6 billion was spent on NGOs (of course many of these are essential, radical left activist ones such as the National Women’s Council, the Immigrant Council of Ireland, Pavee Point etc. are not). €800 million was spent on foreign aid and €225 of an ongoing €725 million bailout was paid to RTE alone. That kind of capital represents a lot of tax breaks and infrastructural development to kickstart a domestic industrialisation programme.
Give young people a vision of Ireland to be excited about. When Ireland emerged as an independent nation, W.T Cosgrave inspired the nation with the construction of the Ardnacrusha hydroelectric power station in Clare. It invigorated a nation. For Ireland 2.0, set the youth the task of being the generation that secures homegrown energy self-reliance. Make Ireland a hub for innovation in small modular nuclear reactors. Unshackle oil and gas exploitation off our coasts. Build university hubs and associated industrial infrastructure to support these innovations.
Ireland is currently a drab place for Ireland’s young. Stay at home in your childhood bedroom and go work in the nearest US multinational for your whole life. Compare that to what could be – an Ireland in which youth is seen as our greatest resource and in which they’re economically supported to turn ideas of self-reliance into reality and to make Ireland a world-leader in cutting edge technologies.
There’s a new Ireland there for the taking for the right. This week its coalition broadened. Add an economic vision of self-reliance and empowerment of youth and see it reach a tipping point.