The Irish government on Tuesday staved off the threat of a snap election by winning a confidence vote by 85 votes to 66 and accused the opposition Sinn Féin of a ‘cynical political stunt’.
The Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael parties which form the governing coalition and currently have a combined 70 seats, were backed by 12 Green lawmakers and several independents.
In bitter exchanges in the Dáil, Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald told lawmakers that the government was “out of touch, clearly out of ideas and now out of time”.
She had also appealed for support from independent lawmakers “whose support keeps this weak and ineffective government in power”.
“Your arrogance today has gone intergalactic. You’d need NASA’s Webb Telescope to be able to track it,” retorted Housing Minister Darragh O’Brien.
“It is a striking fact that the party that is today telling us how our country is a basket case where everything has been wrong for 100 years is, at the same time, claiming that country is so successful that it should be irresistible to the North,” commented Taoiseach Micheál Martin.
Martin also accused the opposition party of adopting “anti-EU positions”. Sinn Féin’s MEPs sit with the leftist GUE/NGL group in the European Parliament.
As part of the coalition deal, Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin will serve as Taoiseach until December, after which Fine Gael leader Leo Varadkar will take over for the remainder of the parliamentary session.
The no-confidence motion was brought against the coalition by Sinn Féin, which polled the most votes in the 2020 elections but won only 36 seats, the same as Fianna Fáil.
The party, whose primary focus has traditionally been on campaigning for a united Ireland and was widely regarded as the political wing of the Irish Republican Army during the Troubles in Northern Ireland, has evolved into a left-wing populist party across the island of Ireland and the leading party across the island.
It also emerged as the largest party following May’s Northern Ireland assembly elections, although a new devolved government to be led by Michelle O’Neill is still yet to be formed because the Democratic Unionist Party refuses to form a new administration until its concerns over the Northern Ireland protocol have been resolved.
Recent surveys in the Republic of Ireland put Sinn Féin on around 35%, while Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, centrist and centre-right parties respectively, which have dominated Irish politics since independence, are polling at between 35 and 40% combined.
The next general elections are not due until February 2025, though the coalition’s fragility could well bring this date forward. In the meantime, Sinn Féin, which has never been in government in Dublin, has built a substantial opinion poll lead in recent months. Should it emerge as a governing party, that could herald a major re-alignment of Irish politics.
[Edited by Alice Taylor]
Source: euractiv.com
