One of the most significant events in Irish history took place since the last time Irish voters went to the ballot boxes to pass their verdicts on politicians – and yet, for some reason, that event is barely featuring in the election campaign.
Not since “the emergency” of the second world war did Irish people experience restrictions on their liberty such as those imposed during the Covid 19 pandemic. The consequences of that lockdown remain with us today, nearly two years after the lockdowns ended. Just this week, reports emerged that school absenteeism remains at a substantially higher level than it was before the pandemic. Many companies switched to a working from home model, and have never fully reverted. Perhaps most significantly, excess mortality – the number of Irish people dying – remains at an elevated level compared to the pre-pandemic era, whatever the explanation for that may be.
And yet, the Government’s handling of the pandemic has not been an issue at all in the election.
There are a few reasons for that, I think: First, Ireland’s consensus dominated politics means that the covid pandemic is another one of those issues that’s entirely off the table for the opposition: Sinn Fein, Labour, the Social Democrats, and many independents backed the lockdowns entirely – indeed in the case of the Social Democrats wanted a much more severe lockdown (that party was the party of zero covid, and has never paid any price for it).
Second, the Irish people’s desire for a sort of collective covid amnesia: Because the lockdowns were immensely popular when introduced, the vast majority of the electorate has “dipped its hand in the blood”, so to speak, and considers itself significantly more complicit in any negative covid lockdown outcomes than it does in relation to government failures on housing or immigration. Those things have been done to us, lockdown for many voters was done by us.
Third, the electorate’s general bias in favour of the present: This is something that was very notable during the first RTE debate the other night, where Fianna Fáil candidate Barry Cowen felt comfortable talking about immigration as if it was simply something that had just happened to the country in the past few weeks rather than the result of several years of Government policy. This is an approach the party clearly thinks will work with that issue on the basis that voters are largely either incapable of or unwilling to connect current outcomes to previous policy. If the electorate – in the view of the parties – is unable to process migration policy over the past few years, what hope has it of connecting current school absenteeism to covid policy two years ago?
None of this is to suggest that opposition candidates are missing a trick – this article is much more about acknowledging the limits of democracy. Elections tend to be about the future much more than the past, and governments tend to get judged not on specific policies but instead on a general vibe about whether they have been competent or not. That said, opposition candidates – particularly those coming out of the system have, I think, been missing a trick.
If voters are incapable of drawing lines between decisions and outcomes, then it is incumbent upon candidates to draw those lines for them on the issues of the day. For one thing, it’s a quick way in a debate to put your opponent on the back foot: Make them defend a decision made two or three years ago, rather than allowing them to talk about their policy today. While a great many candidates are talking about things they would do if they got elected, moving forwards, very few of them are explicitly talking about the Government decisions that led to the very problems they now seek to address. For example, in the aforementioned debate, the Green candidate was not challenged once on Roderic O’Gorman’s now infamous (to a section of the electorate) tweets encouraging people to come to Ireland.
Similarly, on Covid, this is a Government that has promised an enquiry but clearly intends that such an enquiry will not report until, at the earliest, after the next general election. This, in and of itself, suggests that Government is concerned that such an enquiry might reflect badly on it. Covid lockdowns are one area where outsider candidates have a story to tell that establishment candidates simply do not: That they opposed endless lockdowns, that those lockdowns have had real negative impacts on the country, and that voters should take steps to ensure that when they are selecting new representatives to make sure that there are voices in there that will question the consensus.
This broader theme of “shaking things up” and “breaking the consensus” is a theme that has barely been touched on by outsider candidates in this election to date and that, I think, is a mistake: Focusing purely on issues like immigration and crime and health creates a policy divergence with the Government, but not a thematic divergence. The past – including covid 19 – is a way to draw that contrast between insiders and outsiders. Such a contrast, one might think, would be very valuable to anybody looking to break into the system on June 7th.