General Irish politics discussion thread

That's a drop alright… is it a backlash against their new policy against open borders? Or because we're getting close to an election?

Don o'Laoghaire was on Claire Byrne the other morning asked how to stop migrants crossing the open border

He dodged the question 4 or 5 times as if the instructions were on awkward questions is to Waffle on around it and waste up the airtime untill the presenter says 'ok we are out of time'

The migrant crisis is a real achile's heel and Belfast don't know how to manage it and so far by being decisive and not changing his mind the new broom in FG is stealing a march on them ?

Varadkar wouldnt have moved those tents or kicked backsides in departments,he was too soft

One of the issues that SF will have to address is the failure of the government in the North at preventing migrants entering there and travelling South.

I don't think this a reasonable criticism; immigration is a reserved matter and so it is not within the devolved remit of Stormont, Blanch.

As much as I'm happy to criticise SF's incompetence, I think the Home Office might be unimpressed should they attempt to craft and implement policy relating to immigration.

Everything was grand when the misinformation being spread by the far right was in SFs favour.

So SF are effectively letting the tail wag the dog, that's really quite pathetic from them.

Completely agree. Are all the parties behind them? I saw that Labour came out in support already, and I have to assume Sinn Féin and Soc Dems are happy too. Would there be anybody in the Dáil who'd be against it?

A few independents maybe. Not aware of a political party against it.

Is there any indication of when the next Irish general election will take place? Before Christmas or after?

I'd expect early November, as soon as budget and Finance Bill are passed.

At a guess, I'd say they won't want to hold it too close to their St Patrick's Day getaways or during their long summer holidays. They might go October and bring the budget forward to September, or else January

So Sunak jumped because he realised none of his "things that might buy votes" list could happen. Interest rates aren't coming down, unless they interfered with the politically independent BoE. There's no more money coming in for tax cuts. And the Rwanda flights can't happen in time (if ever); plus it isn't stopping the boat crossings anyway. There was not one single way they could try convince voters to come back to them.

Over here, the opposite situation is in place - they'd probably want to hang on to the last day and go longer if there was any legal method to do so; because there is headroom to improve polling in that time.

There is money for tax cuts, at least temporarily. Housing starts are up significantly and there's a lot of very large apartment developments near complete in Dublin at least. And the main opposition party have hit a wall and may veer off one direction to target specific voters and shed the floating voters back to Government or other opposition parties.

Yeah but given the way politics works in this country, that could cost them more votes outside Dublin than win them votes in Dublin…

If FG continue to grow in the polls incrementally and SF continue their decline, or they further stagnate, Harris will go immediately after the budget. The big clue will be the budget date, if it's moved then the election is imminent. If he holds on until Jan/Feb there are all the usual issues around weather, dark nights etc but the longer they wait, the more chance there is for something to go wrong, and they run out of time and have to have an election in circumstances not of their choosing.

Matt Cooper in his podcast last week said he's heard late October/early November. This is based on the pre budget submission date being brought forward to allow the budget itself be early. The only reason the budget would be early is if they want an election before christmas.

The problem there is that if they announce an earlier budget then it gives away the GE date being before Christmas

They will probably try to avoid January as it's typically a time of depressive weather and back to work vibes after Christmas. Not great for getting political points across. My money is on February

I'm surprised at how quickly immigration has become such a vitriol topic.