Support for Fine Gael has slumped with just days to go before the general election, according to the final Irish Times/Ipsos B&A opinion poll of the general election campaign.
The Fine Gael share of the vote has fallen by six points in less than two weeks, reflecting a campaign that has been littered with missteps, and now trails both Fianna Fáil and Sinn Féin.
As the parties embark on a frantic final four days of campaign, and with the three-way televised leaders’ debate scheduled for tomorrow night, the three largest parties are all within two percentage points of one another.
Today’s Key Reads
- In charts: the full results of today’s Irish Times/Ipsos poll
- Simon Harris faces the fight of his political life as Irish Times poll shows drop in support, writes Pat Leahy
- ‘Housing? I have to admit to being comfortable and it’s not affecting me’: Polarised views in south and west Dublin
First quote from an actual car in this election campaign
Harris on Senator John McGahon
Hardly a ringing endorsement of the Louth senator.
Harris tells Byrne that if McGahon had been convicted of assault in a criminal court of law, he would not be a Fine Gael candidate.
When Byrne asks him if he has seen the video of McGahon (in which he strikes Breen White four or five times around the head) Harris replies he was “horriied” by what he saw.
Asked if he would ask the people of Louth to vote for John McGahon, he does not say yes but gives the candidate backing that could be charitably described as conditional. He also points out the party has two candidates in Co Louth. This is what he said:
I’m very angry about this situation. I abhor violence but I do believe he went through a process. He was found not guilty... I want people in Louth to decide based on weighing up his record of service in the community, his time as a Senator. And I think people will look at it in the round and then they will decide.
— Simon Harris
Simon Harris: “There’s no one more annoyed with me than me.’
The Taoiseach is being interviewed by Claire Byrne on RTÉ Radio now. The topic immediately turns to his encounter with Charlotte Fallon on Friday night.
He apologises immediately and repeatedly.
" I can certainly take criticism and and it’s quite an important part of our democracy. And you know, I didn’t meet my own standards, let alone anybody else’s.”
When Byrne puts it to to him, he admits that he “really came up short”.
“The point is I was wrong, when you’re wrong in politics, when you’re wrong in life. I was always willing to own it, to put my hands up, to apologise, to do that immediately, and then to be directed by it. And I did have a very good conversation with Charlotte,” he sais.
And then another apology: “I let myself down, and I’m deeply annoyed with myself, and there’s no one more annoyed with me than me, and particularly on an issue that I feel incredibly passionate about.”
Asked about the impact of this episode on his party’s prospects, he argues he never bought into the theory that his party would coast the election. He said that the three parties would be evenly matched and that people would put what happened at the weekend into context. “Well, I don’t think fair people and decent people will judge me on 40 seconds. They’ll judge me on my record.
“They’ll judge me on what I’m going to do over the next five years, what Fine Gael wants to do, and the plans that we’ve put forward to for once and for all, fix and rectify disability.”
A crucial two days in the political life of Simon Harris
The Simon Harris locomotive has been derailed and it’s going to take a supreme effort to get it back on track. The Taoiseach had an extraordinarily benign six months after taking over as leader from Leo Varadkar and, seemingly, could do no wrong.
There were signs of some fraying in the past fortnight but the unravelling, when it came over the weekend, was brutal. His mis-step in behaving petulantly with Charlotte Fallon during an encounter in Kanturk, Co Cork was captured in video. It has done untold damage to both him and his party.
Harris will be on the Claire Byrne on RTÉ radio show shortly for what could be a very difficult interview. He has to emerge it from it at the very least unscathed and then put in a tour de force in the three-way leader debate tomorrow night. That will be a difficult challenge, to say the least, as he will have to hold his own against the other two leaders, while at the same time showing humility and a caring side.
At about the same time as Harris is doing his interview on RTÉ, Mary Lou McDonald will be interviewed by Pat Kenny on Newstalk.
The Curse of the Ring Doorbell
Duncan Smith has tweeted about it and our own Sarah Burns has also written about it. For the first time in an Irish election, engagement with the voter has occurred by means of a candidate having a conversation with the doorbell as (sometimes) the recipient of the message sits inside the house.
We will get used to it but I’m not used to it yet.
Micheál Martin says on RTÉ that next government will be a “three party coalition”.
The party leaders are doing a series of interviews on broadcast media today. Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin has just done an interview on Morning Ireland and Sinn Féin’s Mary Lou McDonald will be on Pat Kenny’s show on Newstalk after 9am.
Martin faced a series of detailed and probing questions from Audrey Carville on Morning Ireland. The main takeaway, from a political perspective, was his belief that the next government will comprise three parties, not two. It seems to confirm Damian Loschser’s analysis from this morning’s Irish Times poll that a two-party government is not possible if the results of the poll are replicated on election day.
He was asked about the Charlotte Fallon encounter with Simon Harris and her criticism of pay in Section 39 organisations. Martin conceded that that issue needed to be addressed.
What needs to happen is that when the National Public Service Pay Agreement is being negotiated they (Section 39 workers) should be covered... That hasn’t been the case over the last decade or so and this has to change now.”
— Micheál Martin
He agreed that parity was needed with equivalent staff in the HSE and said it was a “frustration” that a deal hammered out a year ago for a 8 per cent pay rise has not been delivered in some organisations. He argued that there are 1,100 such organisations and he “did not want to pretend” it was an easy issue trying to ensure it happened across the board in a timely fashion.
He was also quizzed on the means test for carers, the continuing lack of services for children with additional needs, and the shortage of teachers in primary and secondary schools. On the latter point, he agreed with Carville that there could be incentives to encourage teachers back to Ireland from abroad to meet the deficit of 1,500 across primary and secondary schools. However, he said those incentives should not be “perverse”.
There was a back-and-forth on what a Fianna Fáil government would do in the event of a Trump presidency deciding to impose tariffs, and the impact that would have on windfall taxes from US corporations with bases in Ireland. Carville invited him to say if he would cut spending or increase spending. Like every other political leader he would not go there, referring to the “rainy day fund” which he claims will have €50 billion in reserve by 2031 under a Fianna Fáil government. He also refused to argue on the basis of a recession scenario.
Towards the end of the interview Carville asked him about the shape of the government after the election, if Fianna Fáil was a part of it. His ansewr:
I have always said that my sense is it will be a three party coalition of some form after the general election... We ant a pro-enterprise government that is pro-European and we will engage with parties that are democratic and transparent and are also committed to home ownership and to our priorities, one of which is disabilities.
Harris hop becomes the Simon slump as poll shows Fine Gael behind Sinn Féin
The final Irish Times Ipsos B&A poll of the campaign reveals a stark reversal of fortunes for Fine Gael and Taoiseach Simon Harris, with the party dropping by six points back to third place, just behind Fianna Fáil and Sinn Féin. The results put even more pressure on Harris to perform well and win over voters in Tuesday night's televised debate with Micheal Martin and Mary Lou McDonald.
What’s happening today
Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin will be on Morning Ireland shortly. Later he will be canvassing in Fingal West with Lorraine Clifford-Lee and in Dublin Bay North with Deirdre Heney and Tom Brabazon. Minister for Housing Darragh O’Brien and Cormac Devlin will officially open ten new social homes in Dún Laoghaire.
Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald will be canvassing in Cabra this morning and in East Wall in the afternoon. She is also doing a round of broadcast interviews on during the day.
Its housing spokesman Eoin O Bróin and Louise O’Reilly will be calling on Darragh O’Brien to release the latest homeless figures.
Labour will launch its Dublin manifesto at 10am at the GPO. Leader Ivana Bacik and Dublin MEP Aodhán Ó Ríordáin will be there.
The Social Democrats to publish its plan for supporting families. Jennifer Whitmore and Councillor Jen Cummins will do the launch.
The Green Party will announce its key priorities in the areas of arts and culture.
Independent Ireland will highlight cost-of-living issues.
People Before Profit will call for an end to the “Pay and Number Strategy” health service recruitment embargo at a press conference in Dublin.
Politicians will react reflexively to opinion polls by saying the only poll that matters is the one on election day. However, they never discount them, and, indeed, carry out their own polling. The truth is that they lead every one by the nose as they provide the only measured indicator of the direction in which voter allegiance is going.
This morning’s Irish Times/Ipsos B&A opinion poll will set the agenda for the final week of the election campaign. As is noted in the digest, and in the fantastic analysis from Pat Leahy and Damian Loscher it does not fully capture the impact of the tetchy encounter between Taoiseach Simon Harris and disability worker Charlotte Fallon in Kanturk on Friday evening.
That moment was captured on video and has been watched 3.4 million times since Friday evening. It prompted an immediate apology from Harris but the party has shipped enormous damage at a crucial stage of the campaign.
Fianna Fáil finds itself as the most supported party and it’s clear (and there was evidence of it on the doorsteps) that Sinn Féin is beginning to recover after a year-long decline. The overall result, if repeated in the election, will mean very difficult arithmetic in terms of forming a government.
