Sinn Fein and how do they form a government dilemma

You saw the same thing in Greece when Syriza got power (a party that Sinn Fein was very closely aligned with).

They were great at roaring and shouting in opposition but were exposed as clueless and incompetent in government. You don't hear much about them anymore.

Yeah, Syriza were great when Sinn Fein were aligned with them, when they ruined Greece, that alignment was quietly shelved.

Anybody else suddenly getting bombarded with tiktoks and memes on whatsapp of Mary lous comments and flip flops. Someone seems to have put them all together. Spectacular selection of own goals by herself and Eoin (I wrote a book you know) O'Broin.

The one thing that comes through loud and clear is that leadership matters.

Martin (right or wrongly, and in my view the electorate give him an undeserved free pass for his role in the various disastrous Bertie governments) is seen as a wise elder statesman and Harris is viewed as a breath of fresh air.

Mary Loo and Pearse Doherty compare very badly at present. They only have one gear and it's marked 'roaring\shouting'. Once they need to adjust course on the fly they are incapable of it and you see the results in count centres all around the country.

Unfortunately for SF, there's no sign of any credible replacements so they might as well keep going with Statler and Waldorf at the helm until the GE.

It shows too that if you pull in any old passer by go stand for you you just end up with mediocrity. SF have a few competent looking people like Louise O’Reilly and Matt Carty but go beyond those and the quality falls off very quickly. FF & FG have a competent subs bench and that instilled more confidence in an electorate. A lot can happen over 5 years and you need good people in the wings who can step up. SF don’t Fahy have that luxury that I can see.

I get that but who else can quickly fix that? I live in the area and that hospital is a shítshow. This is also a local election so won’t impact the hospital. However, assuming FF/FG/G are in opposition next term, I’m not sure you can turn arguing the Limerick hospital issue very quickly.

I really don't see the point of having two small explicitly social democratic (note the lower case) parties.

They should merge and call themselves, I don't know….the SDLP. 😀

I think we are unlikely to have a GE before the budget is passed and the bulk of the subsequent measures felt in January. Harris could potentially call for a GE in July to avoid the winter blues and piggyback on the success of Fridays elections. Go to the people while they seem to be asleep at the wheel and all that… Most likely February 2025 I'd say though

I opened a thread to ask the question - be interesting to see what the supporters of either have to say.

MLMD needs to resign as party leader and assuming her ego wont let her, she should be removed. This is if SF want any real chance at the GE.

Unfortunately as other have mentioned, outside of a handful of some decent people the fall off is enormous.

Why they are losing out to independents?… their last 4 years in opposition makes it glaring obvious.

I respectfully dis-agree and it is also short odds on a GE this year happening. No way are the government parties going to allow SF a chance to regain a foothold.

Will be an October election IMO

Agreed. I don’t think there’s any alternative. Giving SF 8-9 months to regroup doesn’t sound like it’s in the government parties interests. After tge budget when there’s that feel good factor now does seem like the way to go. I think if SF swept the boards at the week Ed bd we’d definitely be looking at the latest possible date for an election but not any more.

You might be right but also remember they need the Greens to support the budget, the Greens did not do very well on Friday to put mildly, so they might be apprehensive about elections pre-2025

Also while they could bring back the budget day and have everything legislated for before going to the polls, most of the actual effects of the budget won't kick in until January 1st. Agreed that there are winter blues to deal with which is not good for any candidate.

Good point about the by-elections also, no point in by-elections in December and GE in March, one solution to that is they could legislate to have them as early as next month

I think they lost out to independents because the immigration crisis was blown hugely out of proportion TBH. It was weaponised.
As I said earlier, you could see people here (and more importantly elsewhere) salivating thinking the Shinners would turn hard right in response. I.E. they were weaponising the issue.

As it turned out the hard right garnered very little and we have instead a rag tag group of independents who probably courted that vote.
And look, nobody who steps up for the leadership of SF will be acceptable to the usual crew. How many times did Leo Varadkar fail at the ballot box for FG and we heard none of the clamour from these people for him to go. Be careful taking them as a coherent view on leadership.
IMO MLMD will be given a run at the GE although there may be moves against her. Not seeing any evidence of it though.