Prepping the Leader

Top of the polls is Fine Gael. Leader Simon Harris is currently the Taoiseach – but only since he took over from Leo Varadkar in April.

Fine Gael’s platform is focused on ‘New Energy’. An odd slogan for a party that has been in government for 13 years, this is a clear sign that the campaign is built around Harris, not the party. Harris is a charismatic leader, whose strong points are debating and unscripted, personal moments with constituents. He will approach the debate as an outsider, distancing himself from any failings of his party in government since 2011.

Harris’ biggest weaknesses are his own failings in government. Coalition partners share party failings but Harris’ own career has been a long story of failing upwards. As Minister for Health, he commissioned the new Children’s Hospital building. The commission included a massive loophole that has allowed the building work to go dramatically over budget. Its costs to date are well over €2bn and it is among the most expensive buildings in the world. Harris became the inaugural Minister for Higher Education in 2020. Under his leadership, the Irish university funding crisis got exponentially worse.

Micheál Martin is the Táinaiste and leader of Fianna Fáil. Running on the ‘Moving Forward’ platform, this lifelong politician has been in the Dáil since the 80s. He has somewhat rehabilitated the party after its decimation in 2011.

His best approach to the debate is to rely on his experience as a steady pair of hands in leadership as well as the recent budget. Fianna Fáil’s deputy leader, Jack Chambers, is the Minister for Finance, so the party can lean into the reliefs provided in the budget last month.

That being said, he supported the Fine Gael minority government between 2016 and 2020 and he is part of the current government. Opposition parties will attack him as the incumbent. The current Minister for Health, continuing the Children’s Hospital fiasco, is also a Fianna Fáil member.

Ever in opposition, Mary Lou McDonald’s Sinn Féin has been falling in polls for the last six months. Over the last five years, she has positioned herself as some sort of heir apparent to the government, especially since Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil had to put aside their century-long rivalry in order to keep her party out of government in 2020.

As the main opposition leader, Mary Lou can attack every aspect of the government. Last year, Sinn Féin became the main governing party in the North of Ireland for the first time. Mary Lou can lean into re-unification as a realistic possibility under a Sinn Féin government. This will also refocus the party platform on Republicanism.

Sinn Féin’s ever-present pressure on the government has led to a number of its preferred policies being adopted. As a result, smaller opposition parties have lambasted the party for not providing proper opposition to the government. In particular, Aontú’s Peadar Toibín, expelled from Sinn Féin six years ago, will be quite critical of the party’s performance, especially on its flip-flopping on the Hate Speech bill earlier this year.

Also, Mary Lou’s own seat is likely to be in danger from recently-unseated MEP Clare Daly and mob boss Gerry Hutch, who is seeking revenge for Sinn Féin’s role in his trial for murder last year.

Labour was demolished in 2016 after serving in government with Fine Gael. They lost 30 seats. Over the last 10 years, the party has run through a series of leaders, most recently settling on Ivana Bacik. This academic activist spent most of her political career in the Seanad before finally winning a by-election to the Dáil in 2021.

Bacik’s best approach to the debate is as a challenger. She should lean into her legal and academic background as well as her pivotal roles in social change campaigns over the last decade. Harris and Martin have both publicly changed their minds on hot topics but Bacik has remained consistent since she was Students’ Union President in Trinity in the late 80s.

Her biggest weakness tonight will be that she won’t be worth attacking. Labour notched a win in the EU Election in June but otherwise it has been largely irrelevant since 2016. It would actually be a big mistake for any other leader to train fire at Bacik unless she does a good enough job attacking them right from the start.