Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael are neck and neck in the battle to become the largest party of local government, while Sinn Féin is planning a review of its electoral performance with leader Mary Lou McDonald saying she was sorry her party did not do better.
With a majority of seats filled in the local elections on Sunday evening, Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil were claiming success after a result that left many Sinn Féin figures stunned, given the momentum that had been behind the party after its stunning electoral success in the 2020 general election.
The Labour Party was celebrating a series of victories around the country in areas such as Tipperary, Sligo, Cork and Galway. The Social Democrats, as of Sunday night, were trailing the Labour Party but party figures were insistent that they were pleased with a number of wins in areas such as Bandon-Kinsale, Rush/Lusk, Dublin North Inner City and Kimmage Rathmines.
The Green Party, meanwhile, was hopeful of potentially holding their six seats on Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council and of achieving a solid performance around the country once the final counts are completed.
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As of Sunday evening, Aontú had also taken four seats while People Before Profit had taken three and was hopeful of retaining more.
The huge wave of support for Independents continued with a number of Independent candidates topping the poll around the country, including Trim, Cabra Glasnevin, Dundrum, Dundalk South and Edenderry.
Verona Murphy’s Wexford Independent Alliance looked set to make gains in the county, with Nicky Boland winning a seat in Gorey on the eighth count last night.
As of Sunday evening, Fine Gael was averaging nearly 23 per cent of the first-preference vote, as was Fianna Fáil. Sinn Féin was on 11.7 per cent of first-preference votes, but there were still a number of areas due to be counted. There was evidence in many count centres of the Government parties transferring to each other, after decades of so-called “civil war politics” between Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil.
Taoiseach and Fine Gael leader Simon Harris said the story of the election was the “absolute collapse of support for Sinn Féin”.
Sinn Féin is facing a scenario where many of its third, fourth and fifth candidates around the country will fail to be elected, with questions asked around whether it ran too many candidates. This is a major turnaround from the charge Ms McDonald faced of not running enough candidates in the 2020 general election.
Speaking in the RDS on Sunday, Ms McDonald said her party would take time to “regroup” and focus on “solutions”.
“We have made some gains. They are modest, but they’re there. It hasn’t been our day. Clearly frustrations and indeed anger with Government policy, on this occasion, has translated into votes for Independents and others,” she said. “I am sorry we didn’t do better, I know that we can do better and I am determined that we will do better.”
She rejected suggestions that party headquarters had ignored concerns from the grassroots about Sinn Féin having too many candidates in the field. She also said her leadership of the party was not in question. “I will lead this reflection, and this process,” she said. “When the going gets tough, that’s the point at which leaders step forward, they don’t step down.
“We don’t always get it right. We clearly have lessons to learn.”
Asked what those lessons might be, she said Sinn Féin needed to “sharpen our offering and our message” on key issues such as housing, the cost of living and health. “What we will and must do better is to give real clarity to the solutions and the plans that Sinn Féin has for all of those issues, not merely diagnosing what is wrong but very, very clearly and very energetically setting out our stall.”
The election result has led to heightened speculation around the timing of the next general election, with multiple Government sources saying that they now believe it will happen between September and November of this year.
Asked about his position on when the general election should be held, Mr Harris said his view “hasn’t changed”. He previously said he wanted the Coalition to continue for its full term, which would mean no election until early next year.
Speaking at the RDS count centre in Dublin, Mr Harris said: “I’ve answered this question many times since becoming Taoiseach … but my position in relation to that hasn’t changed.”
He thanked Fine Gael activists and supporters for their work around the country, and said it was his view that the public wants “more than soundbites or rhetoric or noise” in relation to housing. “I think the people knew exactly what Sinn Féin were selling, and they just didn’t want to buy it.”
Asked about the success of Independents, Mr Harris said: “I think actually there’s lots of decent, hard-working Independent candidates across the country. I’ve seen some of them in my own constituency … and people vote for a whole variety of different reasons and I think it would be arrogant for me to presume why people vote in certain ways.
“Independents seem to have held their own in many places but the story here I don’t think is a surge in Independents. I think it’s the absolute collapse in support for Sinn Féin.”
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