Some countries are governed by the Right. Some countries are governed by the Left. Ireland is governed by the Centrist Dads.
Centrist Dads are respectable people who vote for respectable parties, Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil particularly.
Those within their group might self-identify as ‘socially liberal and economically conservative.’
They are for anything that is new and fashionable: abortion, death-by-doctor, surrogacy, transgenderism, referendums to make the Constitution seem less Catholic and so forth.
They see no reason why new people with radically different cultures and beliefs should not be allowed into Ireland.
After all, the resulting diversity makes Ireland less like it was when the Conservative Granddads were in their prime. Centrist Dads don’t remember much that was bad in their youth, but RTÉ and Cillian Murphy have told them that it was “like the f_____g dark ages compared to now” and that is good enough for them.
While they like change, the Centrist Dads like the thought of poverty much less so, and they are against anything that could really rock the boat.
Sinn Féin is particularly frightening and also reeks of sulphur, so in 2024 and on other occasions, the Centrist Dads have rallied to the polls to keep them out.
Those far-right types with uncouth accents are feared even more, and the Centrist Dads are happy to support like-minded politicians like Micheál Martin, Simon Harris and Paschal Donohoe who will save the country from the great unwashed.
In an Ireland where social liberalism has brought with it more broken families and more empty and atomised lives, that means spending money and passing more laws constantly, and the Centrist Dads are not too perturbed.
The recent Budget 2026 brought annual spending up to €117.8 billion, up from €105.4 billion in Budget 2025 and €96.6 billion in Budget 2024.
It is a good thing that the adults are in the room, or economic mismanagement might occur, the Centrist Dads will reflect. Paschal Donohoe is a world-class Finance Minister after all, who writes excellent reviews of Centrist Dad-friendly books in The Irish Times. No problems are on the horizon, not the stunning increases in spending and not the €860 billion in debt and pension liabilities either.
The presidential election of 2025 should have been a wake-up call. The fact that someone who CNN rightly describes as being “on the far-left of the Irish political spectrum” can win a presidential election shows how far the political pendulum has swung here.
FFG told Irish voters that Catherine Connolly is an extremist (which she is), that her election would have serious repercussions for Ireland internationally (which it will) and that they definitely needed to vote against her (which they didn’t).
Heather Humphreys was the candidate of the Establishment, the stabilitarians, the Centrist Dads. She was for them and off them.
When push came to shove though, they could offer absolutely no positive reason to support Humphreys, only negative reasons not to support Catherine Connolly.
At a time when most of the Western world is moving to the Right, Ireland is tilting noticeably to the Left, because the Right barely functions and the FFG centre has no ideas anymore.
Fintan O’Toole hit the nail on the head when he described Irish politics as consisting of “a middle ground that seemingly lacks belief in anything beyond its own God-given right to power; [and] a broad left that has momentum and symbolic authority, but as yet no clear alternative programme for government.”
It will be a lot harder for Sinn Féin and that broad Left to develop that agreed programme than simply to back an agreed presidential candidate, but they are on their way, and in the next election they should have a positive vision even if they do not have a transfer pact.
Unprincipled and baseless centrism is a busted flush, and ‘socially liberal but economically conservative’ is a redundant slogan for a bankrupt ideology. .
Given their records, an ideal outcome for those in search of an alternative to the status quo would involve replacing Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael with something better.
Replacing a traditionally dominant party with a new political vehicle is exceptionally hard though. Only Giorgia Meloni has managed it recently; Nigel Farage may yet accomplish something similar in the UK.
The structure of Irish politics – particularly the large-scale state funding of parties – makes such a task even more difficult here. The easiest path would therefore involve changing the behaviour of those large parties.
They will be reluctant to listen, but the international evidence is compelling. Centrist Dad politics is still dominant in Ireland, but it is dying off elsewhere.
Pre-Trump Republicans defied conservative voters on immigration and interventionism, and paid dearly. Boris Johnson thought he could fuel an economic recovery using mass low-skilled immigration, and his party will probably never recover.
In Germany, the Christian Democrats/Christian Social Union rebuilt their country after World War Two, and operated according to a sound principle: “There must be no democratically legitimised party to the right of CDU/CSU.“
That worked for strong conservatives like Adenauer and Kohl, but Angela Merkel’s disastrous immigration and energy policies made a populist revolt inevitable.
History teaches us that parties can change significantly in response to societal conditions and voter preferences.
Eisenhower’s Republican Party was very different to Reagan’s, which is very different to Trump’s. Under Harold MacMillan, the Tories were essentially a social democratic party, but Thatcher made them free marketeers again.
No dramatic change is likely in FFG under the current leadership, but they should have the sense to recognise what President Connolly’s election means for their brand of politics.
Since the economic crash, if not even earlier, we have had a structural imbalance in Irish politics.
The Left has a vision and calls for it to be enacted, and FFG do just that, slowly but surely.
Because the Centrist Dads have no views of their own, they can be easily reconciled to the new reality on every issue, and there has long been an abundance of money for governments to throw at every policy problem.
Enough of this. A positive vision which contrasts with that of the Left can be put to the voters, and one which is sufficiently moderate so as not to require a complete about face by the party leaders.
On economic issues, the Left wants more taxes, more spending, more regulations and more rent controls.
The government should make a stronger moral case for why people should keep more of their own money, and they should not be afraid to defend landlords either (Catherine Connolly defended them in court after all).
Simon Harris praising John Collison’s article about overregulation is a good start – maybe the Tánaiste has been reading ‘Abundance.’ Either way, it is time for him to act on this: it should be easy to build things and hard to object to things being built.
On social issues, recent referendums are not going to be reversed in the short-term, but traditionalists would appreciate it if the government would accept that parents are the ultimate decision makers on education, oppose the sexualisation and politicisation of the school curriculum, and take steps to make it financially easier for people to have children.
On energy policy, the large parties need to stop echoing the apocalyptic warnings of the Left. Their goal should be to provide energy cheaply and to minimise pollution where possible, not to sacrifice the country’s prosperity on the altar of a new pseudo-religion.
On immigration, FFG has made agreeing with the centre Left and extreme Left a perverse badge of honour. Days before the election, The Irish Times reported that Heather Humphreys and Catherine Connolly “largely agreed on migration.”
Given the extreme nature of the leftist stance (which involves open borders in practice if not in principle), what sense does this agreement make in a country where three in every four voters wants less immigration?
Instead of mimicking the likes of Ivana Bacik, centre to centre-right politicians should have the courage to disagree with her publicly: to make the case for deportations and border enforcement across the EU.
Immigration should be limited, and the whole process should involve immigrants changing to adapt to Irish society, rather than Irish society changing to adapt to the presence of immigrants.
Centrist Dad politics has reached its limits. If Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael continue to practice it, they will be ruined along with the country as well.