With a housing emergency and the cost of living weighing heavily on voters’ minds, anything could happen at the polls on Friday
In Easter, 1916, his epic poem about the failed Dublin rebellion that eventually led to Irish independence, William Butler Yeats declared: “A terrible beauty is born.” The same might be said about the marriage of convenience between Ireland’s old civil war enemies, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, as they attempt to recreate their history-making coalition government.
The two parties are now in power alongside the Greens, but this time round their mission is to stop the main opposition, Sinn Féin, entering government as part of a three-way coalition in the Republic after Friday’s general election. Instead, their preference would be to coalesce with Labour, because of voter resistance to climate-change measures.
Justine McCarthy is an Irish journalist and the author of An Eye on Ireland: Writings from a Changing Nation
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Source link : https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/nov/28/ireland-taoiseach-voters-polls-housing-cost-of-living
Author : Justine McCarthy
Publish date : 2024-11-28 07:00:35
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