Dublin Euro Election, post mortem

The voters of Dublin have chosen Gay Mitchell (Fine Gael), Proinsias De Rossa (Labour) and Joe Higgins (Socialist Party) as their three new MEP’s on June 5th.  The media has been full of comment of winners and losers, victors and vanquished, the disappointed and forlorn.  Her is my perspective on the outcome in the Dublin Euro constituency:

 

	2004 Election	% Share of Poll	2009 Election	% Share of Poll
Electorate	821,723		812,465
Valid Poll	421,897		406,630
Quota	84,380		101,658
Fine Gael Mitchell	90,749	22%	96,715	24%
Fianna Fail Ryan Brady Byrne	61,681 36,269	13% 9%	55,346 18,956	14% 5%
Labour De Rossa Bacik	54,344 40,707	13% 10%	83,471	21%
Green McKenna deBurca	40,445	9%	19,086	5%
Socialist Higgins	23,218	6%	50,510	12%
Sinn Fein McDonald	60,395	14%	47,928	12%
Libertas Simons			13,514	3%
Independents McKenna Sweeney Despard Price Prenderville Doonan	5,352 4,813 2,071 1,853	2% 1% <1% <1%	17,521 3,583	4% 1%

 

Fine Gael

I speculated that if Mitchell obtained 100,000 votes that would be a real breakthrough in Dublin because they never surpassed 90,000 votes heretofore and are poorly organised and poorly represented in several parliamentary constituencies.  This election marks real progress.  Fine Gael now has 334 council seats throughout Ireland and 12 on Dublin City Council, a gain of 2.

Fianna Fail

A drop from 22% to 18% and a rout in the local elections and two by-elections is the reflection of a very angry electorate, many suffering severely as a consequence of the economic downturn and poor government economic management.  Ryan is a well respected politician but he bore the ire of the voters.  His running mate is completing a very successful year as Lord Mayor of Dublin. The number of councillors in Dublin has dropped from 12 to 6 and by over  100 throughout the country to 213.

Labour

Great strides in the local elections cannot mask a 2% drop in Euro support but De Rossa did well as a solo candidate.  While he has service in the European Parliament since 1989 he is not universally known throughout the county.  Labour captured a third of the Dublin city vote in the local elections and are the largest party in Dublin City Council with 19 seats.

Greens

They are suffering the consequences of being a coalition partner in a thoroughly unpopular government and also lost all of its 9 council seats in Dublin. 

Sinn Fein

The 2004 vote was a high watermark that was not sustainable in 2009. They lost 3 of their 10 seats on Dublin City Council.

Socialist Party

Higgins more than doubled his vote but is this surprising when the Live Register exceeds 400,000?  He is regarded as being very committed to his particular perspective.

Libertas

Rejected by the electorate following an anaemic campaign by Simons.  The upstart organization had a substantial seat target across Europe but managed to have only one outgoing French MEP re-elected.  Its tears for the great vision.

Independents

McKenna’s star is on the wane and she is jaded.  The promise she presented as a Green Party candidate failed to inspire.

Final Phase of Dublin Euro election campaign

Party	Euro Election 2004	General Election 2007	TNS-MRBI Poll, 15 May	TNS-MRBI Poll , 26 May
Fianna Fáil	23	39.4	16	14
Fine Gael	22	18.5	26	28
Labour	23	14.2	21	25
Green Party	10	8.4	6	6
Sinn Fein	14	7.1	14	11
Socialist Party	6	2.3	7	9
Other	2	10.1 including PD's	10 McKenna 7 Simons 1	7 McKenna 5 Simons 2

The latest poll data from The Irish Times TNS-MRBI poll shows that Gay Mitchell, the outgoing MEP and Fine Gael candidate has strengthened his position by 2 points and has every prospect of being elected on the first count. The Labour Party candidate, Proinsias De Rossa could also be elected on the first count.

There will be a battle for the 3rd seat and the Socialist Party candidate, Joe Higgins has strengthened his claim at the expense of outgoing MEP and Sinn Féin candidate, Mary Lou McDonald. McDonald’s poll showing has dropped by 3 points and this follows publicity about her poor attendance record at the Parliament – 55%.

While Eoin Ryan’s running mate, Dublin Lord Mayor, Eibhlin Byrne has maintained her 5% share, Ryan’s has dropped by 2 points to 9%, the same as Higgins.  Byrne has served the city well as Lord Mayor although she was quoted in the media last week as advocating a sentence of community service for Frank Dunlop, who was convicted on his own guilty plea of bribing councillors over a protracted period in relation to planning.  The taxpayer funded a €500,000,000 million tribunal of enquiry to investigate these matters and the consequences of them – overpriced development land, appalling planning decisions and more recently, a burst housing bubble – I would have thought that Her Worship might have served her cause better by holding her breath on this matter.  Too many voters are enduring very costly consequences as an outcome of Dunlop’s bribes on behalf of property developers.

Patricia McKenna, who won 10% of the valid poll in the 2004 Euro election is showing at 5% (from 8%) but this has probably put a hole in the chances of Green Party candidate, Deirdre de Burca. de Burca has failed to make much impact in this campaign and the Green Party position with respect to the second referendum on The Lisbon Treaty is as ambiguous and opaque as the response of the Catholic religious congregations to compensating victims of child sex abuse. The Greens have been criticised for choosing deBruca as a candidate because her political base has been in Wicklow (Leinster constituency) but I don’t think that carries much weight.  But her campaign has been lacklustre, lacking either passion, or inspiration. 

I am not surprised that the Libertas candidate, Caroline Simons has failed to make any impact because she is contesting this election without having even introduced herself to her electorate. It is simply not sufficient to campaign on the basis of tittle-tattle shibboleths and overarching criticism of rivals.  The electorate would also seem hesitant about the concept of a Europe-wide political force being launched from Ireland in this election by individuals who have neither a political record of any apparent impact on community wellbeing.

Post-Lisbon Treaty Referendum Sentiment 

When the first referendum on The Lisbon Treaty was held on 12 June 2008, Dublin voted 51 - 49 against. The TNS-MRBI poll the week prior to the referendum showed 30% in favour, 35% against and 35% undecided. Those who campaigned against the Treaty last year (McDonald, Higgins, McKenna) are not achieving much traction from this in the forthcoming contest.  It will be interesting to discern public sentiment on this matter because a second referendum is pending later this year.  The outcome of the first referendum for each Dublin Dáil was as follows:

	Electorate	Valid Poll	Yes	No	For %	Against %
Central	57,864	28,265	12,328	15,816	44%	56%
Mid West	61,622	31,833	12,577	19,182	40%	60%
North	81,550	45,077	22,696	22,194	50%	49%
North Central	51,156	31,245	15,772	15,396	50%	49%
North East	52,432	29,991	12,917	16,973	43%	57%
North West	49,893	26,394	9,576	16,749	36%	63%
South	87,855	51,342	32,190	19,005	63%	37%
South Central	67,499	42,170	16,410	25,624	39%	61%
South East	81,743	27,871	17,111	10,644	61%	38%
South West	56,202	36,181	12,601	23,456	35%	65%
West	52,173	28,421	13,573	14,754	48%	52%
Dun Laoghaire	84,710	49,810	31,534	18,149	63%	36%
TOTAL	784,699	428,600	209,285	217,942	49%	51%

 

Impact on Fianna Fáil

The other factor that will be interesting to discern is what exactly will happen to the Fianna Fáil vote in Dublin on June 5th.  The party won 40.4% of the vote in the 2007 general election.  It holds seats in every Dublin constituency – two seats in seven constituencies and five others.

The following table illustrates the strength of Fianna Fáil in each of the Dublin Dáil constituencies in the last general election:

 

Dublin Constituency	FF Share of Valid Poll, 2007
North West	48.8%
South	45.6%
Central	44.5%
North Central	44.0%
North	42.1%
North East	39.7%
South West	39.3%
West	37.4%
Dun Laoghaire	34.9%
Mid West	33.0%
South East	28.7%

The Sinn Féin Candyfloss School of Economics Fails to Convince

The School of Candyfloss Economics concentrates on the distribution of politically confiscated wealth. But it offers few ideas when it comes to the creation of productive wealth. Ireland very much needs insights into this having relied excessively and, to its ultimate detriment, on the creation of wealth through property and asset inflation and the acquisition of this through serial leveraged transactions.

The petticoat of the Sinn Féin Candyfloss School of Economics when raised slightly was less than inspiring in an opinion article by Mary Lou McDonald, vice-president, in The Irish Times on Friday, 13th March. She wants to form a new alliance and offer an 'egalitarian alternative’. A second No vote by Ireland in the Lisbon Treaty would of course expedite this goal. All of us would be equally poor, destitute. terminally unemployed and utterly bereft.

This egalitatian ambition is characterised by a potential orgy of additional public sector expenditure, platitudes about job retention and job creation. But there is not a single observation as to what type of productivity-enhancing, market focused, initiatives that are also cost-effective and economically viable, would sustain this dream. Does it ever dawn on these people that there really is no such thing as pure egalitarianism or absolute equality. These are relative terms and their achievement, to the extent that this is possible, does not exclusively depend on politicians, however indispensible they feel their contribution is and this usually involves a caricature of a nanny state, in one configuration or another. But the desirability of the State becoming 'the nipple of the nation' is as desirable as the caricature of ministers' of state having all the imperious bearing and grandeur of heads' of minor African states.

The scrapping of the public sector levy is proposed as well as ‘fundamental tax reform’. This might sound attractive to individuals like me who are subject to this levy. However, there is not as much as a single mention of how wealth based on real productivity might be created and rewarded. How can government expenditure be funded if there is no underlying wealth created to sustain it? Too much of Ireland’s wealth has been attributable to a false premise, specifically, the appreciation of property values at a breathless rate the consequences of which are now almost bankrupting the country. This was made possible by banks lending to people they should not have lent to and and borrowers who didn't have the means of repaying the capital borrowed and the associated interest. It has even been disclosed that the fund that provides welfare support will run out of resources by next year. This is funded by PRSI remittances.

Sinn Féin speak of ‘balanced public spending’ and ‘sensible borrowing’. What does this really mean? What borrowing ceiling is envisaged given prevailing economic circumstances and increased levels of State debt? Who will provide this money and at what cost? How credible a borrower would a government containing a Sinn Féin component have with potential lenders and those whose influence potential lenders heed?

Sinn Féin want to ensure that bank credit becomes available to sustain small and medium-sizd businesses. But in a world credit system that migrated from being dysfunctional to non-functioning and consumers have simply stopped spending, how is this to be accomplis

Job retention and job creation are mentioned. A job creation plan, detailed cost proposals and targets do not in themselves stimulate employment. They have as much potency as a bishop's apology for the deeds of a paedophile priest. Plans and targets merely offer incidental context that may, or may not, be relevant or useful. Furthermore, if the jobs’ ambition is merely on the 164,952 jobs that have been lost to date it could mean that the thousands of job losses that are sadly pending are not factored into the School of Candyfloss Economics policies. What will the the source of the anticipated jobs?

The suggestion that borrowing should be for strategic investment and be time-limited probably ought to be described in the first paragraph of Economics for Greenhorns. Who ever heard of a lender offering loans that are not ‘time limited’?

Why would Sinn Féin wish to ‘stop illegal evictions’? Illegal evictions are derring-do of neighbourhood mobs so perhaps they intend to resist their own racketeer or mobster elements.

Ending tax shelters, ending tax exile status, the overhaul of tax reliefs and the avoidance of tax evasion by the wealthy are awesome ideas but not exactly original or practical. Given that we live in a free society with guarantees of freedom of movement, how would Sinn Féin respond if all the categories they seek to impose greater tax burden on simply move out of this jurisdiction? The sandpit could empty very quickly and there would be nobody left to play with the train set.

I think that Sinn Féin have a great deal of political growing up to do in this Republic before they convincingly persuade those outside their core supporters that they offer a credibile, competent dynamic alternative governing option. They also need to escape the chains of their rhetoric and realise that empty shibboleths do not convince those who seek genuine and potentially sustainable change. The votes of floating voters are hard earned. All political parties need to convince a sceptical and distressed electorate that their ideas to restore competitiveness in Ireland are credibile and that productive wealth can be generated and rewarded. When that has been done it would then be time to cost and prioritise the initiatives that will lead to the type of society that each of them dream about.!