Sinn Fein and how do they form a government dilemma

SF walked because the First Minister, embroiled in a corruption scandal, would not stand aside (she wasn't asked to resign, just asked to step aside) and because of the longer running misuse of the Petition Of Concern being used to block agreed(by a majority of MLA's) rights.
The DUP pulled it down and used the people as hostages to try to get something that Stormont couldn't give and could not, even if there was majority agreement (there wasn't anyway) effect.

Our last coalition government here fell because the main party did not have the support.

Coalitions collapse, everywhere. Nothing unique about that, here or in north or anywhere else.

The Greens have changed this country dramatically 

Most of the dramatic change in this country was driven by our membership of the EU.
And the Irish Greens are no longer represented there.
Changes will continue to happen across the EU without their input.

I never mentioned anything about 'self preservation'.

What I object to is smaller parties allowing themselves to be used and willingly allowing whatever mandate they have to be diluted and ignored to …eh…help preserve FF or FG dominance.

The Greens stuck to a plan and delivered on it, something they can be proud of, a lot of good has been done in a short space of time by the green party

Which of course made them a target for some other party supporters who have driven a narrative for a few years now online.

I do reference the most vocal anti Green person onboards who is on any thread to do with environment etc, they proudly stated they would vote SF because they would put a stop to the wind generation nonsense, then I pointed to the SF document which they released saying they would in fact speed up the deployment of wind. Another SF supporter who hadn't a clue what their policies are

The greens election manifesto 2020

A 7 per cent per year fall in emissions to reach the EU CO2 reduction target of a minimum 50 per cent by 2030.

Current best case scenario is 29%

EV charge points at all petrol stations

Probably the easiest one to implement, not achieved

retrofit 750,000 houses to improve energy efficiency

Definitely failed

€210 million per annum for retrofitting, and a budget of €40 million to train 20,000 workers who can specialise in this area

Maybe we have 20,000 qualified workers specialised but I can't even find 1 to do dry lining insulation, not achieved

all students in the State be entitled to free public transport

Not achieved

On education, Ms Martin said the party wanted the pupil-teacher ration to drop from the current 25 to 1, to 20 to 1 over the lifetime of the next government.

Not achieved

Actually I'll stop there, if anybody has a list of what they did achieve from their 2020 manifesto it might be a shorter list

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/election-2020-green-party-manifesto-outlines-2-5bn-retrofitting-plan-1.4151719

The achievements they have made in rewetting the bog, FiT, 0% VAT on solar, cycle lanes etc

Exactly, some good ^ and as Red points out some bad/failures too.

You can't force a garage to install a charger if they don't want to.

Plus the demand is not required at the moment, I have an electric car for 8 years now I think and used a public charge point maybe 10 times in that time. With bigger batteries now most people will never need to use one. But that's off topic

So two random people on the internet absolve the Greens from failing to implement a part of their policy. That’s profound.

What is the SF manifesto? We want a United Ireland and we want to be in power in stead of the other lot. Everything else is just a list of promises to everyone and anyone so they can get into power. Who pays for all these promises - "the rich people". Who are the rich people - anyone with more money than you.

At least the Greens have an ideology they believe in and are prepared to try and achieve. SF need to stop trying to be all things to all people and stand up for what they actually believe in. What promises are their priorities and how will they pay for them (the truth).

End the issuing of oil and gas exploration and extraction licences and stand firmly against the importation of fracked gas from other territories. Achieved

Not hard to do in fairness, we never had much oil extraction off our coastline. Important to note it only affects new licences, the existing ones can carry on as usual

Ban single use plastic and set up a bottle deposit and return scheme, to dramatically reduce plastic waste. Achieved.

EU policies - these would have been introduced regardless of the greens making deals with the Civil War parties. If the SF manifesto said all new cars would be EVs by 2035 or I'd be as critical

Get Ireland moving by doubling investment in public transport, committing 10% of transport funds to cycling and 10% to walking. Achieved

Not sure on this one, there's more cycle lanes, sure, but they are vastly under-utilised and the slow moving vehicles are now polluting our environment more as a result, it feels like they just threw them anywhere without any real thought as to how they might get used, is this really the definition of success?

I was waiting 20 minutes the other day for a bus that was 5 minutes away according to TFI Live. In the end it never showed up so I just got a taxi. Maybe I'm the exception and public transport has doubled in efficiency in other parts of the country?

So really they only had one achievement despite having 3 of the 15, or 20% of the ministerial portfolios including transport and environment. Two places where they could have made significant improvements but they fell flat on their face

You seem to be unsure about a lot of things. Ryan stopped theexpansion of the Corribb gas field, he stopped the development of Barryroe, has significantly delayed the Limerick Cork Motorway and other road projects, he got the Foynes railway line being build. He stopped the Tarbert/Ballylongford gas storage plant. None of these actions made economic sense and neither FG, FG or SF would have carried put those actions but the f@@ker did it.

So stop BSing, wake up and smell the coffee

Childers Road and Shannon bridge

Cycle lane built over a lane of traffic in each situation over the last 2 years, rarely seen used, never to a large extent, traffic slower and more polluting as a result

That probably fairly true. I'm genuinely not sure at all what "the spansion ofvyge Corribb gas field" is.

Not sure if the gas terminal in Kerry would make a huge difference either way to our economy, I'd imagine if I did the blueshirts would have vetoed it.

Stopping the building of the Cork-Limerick motorway, while it's probably increased the number of road deaths in that part of the country, it also makes busses run slower between the 2 cities so is that really a win for public transport? I think not. Didn't Ossian Smith mention a vision for a greenway between the 2 cities? How's that progressing?

Let's break that down

BusConnects - Not a green plan, started in 2017

Metrolink - Is that the metro for Dublin that's been going since 2005 and still hasn't had a shovel in the ground? Some achievement

DartPlus- The plans started in 1972

Cycle lanes - The ones that nobody uses? Ok that's a win

Pedestrian improvements - Where?

Climate Action Act - Not working, in fact things are getting worse

Recycling - We had recycling since the early 2000's???

I corrected the few typing mistakes. You do not get it yes all of these actions are unpopular to many but they are a "manification of GP policy". They got there policies implemented, you or I may disagree with them but they got them f@@king implemented.

How many SF policies were implemented in the last fifteen years and how many in the next 5 at least the way the polling numbers are. ..ya that is right f@@king NONE

As I said wake up and smell the coffee. No party in a coalition gets all its policies implemented for a small mudguard the GP got a significant amount of its policies implemented. Some have an element of EU involvement but with the GP in government they were pushed through.

But many that I listed had nothing to do with the EU

Well, yes, parties in opposition don't get many policies implemented. Considering most of the SF policies revolve around sorting out the homeless and healthcare crises you could argue they will never be implemented by a FFG led govt. But then again considering most of their voters are landlords, farmers bankers and Private hospital owners you can understand it to an extent

the number of cyclists are growing

Do you have stats to back this up?

So no stats then? Fair enough I had expected that. It's ironic really, the SF supporters on here always have to back up what they say (and to be fair, usually do) but the FFG supporters, and in this case the green party ones, can spout any old nonsense and call it a fact. It's this exact mentality that got Donald Trump elected in the states, horrifying stuff

You are right, all of those things were sitting there as policies gathering dust until the Greens came along and gave them a real push. By next year, we will have railway orders in place for a number of major infrastructural improvements, all thanks to Eamon Ryan. Pedestrian improvements all over Dublin City Centre. Hundreds of km of new cycle lanes.

Going back to Sinn Fein, partition has existed for over 100 years, and in that 100 years, they have done nothing to advance abolishing it, other than organising a few in-house rallies. They would be delighted with the Greens record in policy achievement.

https://vote.sinnfein.ie/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Sinn-Fein-Westminster-Election-Manifesto-2024.pdf

If you are looking for a joke, have a read of this.

"We are leading the way to build a stronger, better and fairer country" but we won't take our seats in Westminister to actually do something about this.

"By voting for Sinn Féin people are endorsing strong leadership, positive change, and a commitment to work for all." We are really good at generic meaningless phrases that could be a part of any party's manifesto.

"People here want positive change, and Sinn Féin is the only party that offers an all-island approach to deliver that change.
Sinn Féin’s influence has been central to the incredible transformation that has taken place in the North. "

These two consecutive sentences sum up our schizophrenic mentality. We claim credit for an "incredible transformation" while simultaneously seeking to change away from that incredible transformation. Kindergarten stuff.

"Constitutional change requires an Irish government to prepare for the future in a strategic and responsible fashion.
This includes establishing a Citizen’s Assembly which creates an opportunity for people to engage in a dialogue addressing all the practical and positive possibilities that constitutional change can bring." We want constitutional change but we are not prepared to do anything about it, we will just leave that up to others.

The whole manifesto reads like a transition year student project.

You won't be saying that when they increase their seat number at the general election

If they produce a joke of a manifesto like the one in the North at the general election here, they will be lucky to outpoll the PBP.

Sinn Fein are bereft of ideas, reduced to MLMD shouting for "change".

I have to agree about the crash and burn.

We are at most nine months out from the general election. Sinn Fein have had over four years to set out what they would do differently. You look at their website, their speeches, their documents and there is a complete absence of coherent policy.

Just to take one spokesperson and one area of policy - the idiot that is Martin Kenny. He is their spokesperson on transport and communications.

https://vote.sinnfein.ie/taoiseach-must-intervene-to-ensure-aer-lingus-re-enter-talks-with-ialpa-martin-kenny-td/

"Sinn Féin spokesperson on Transport and Communications, Martin Kenny TD, has called on the Taoiseach to intervene to ensure that Aer Lingus management return to the negotiating table with IALPA representatives as a matter of urgency."

Does he think that the government still owns Aer Lingus? Does he somehow think that the Taoiseach can just ring up the CEO of a private company and tell them what to do? Naive, foolish, ignorant, idiotic, those are the best words to describe Kenny. Here he is last week on the DART spur to Clongriffin.

https://vote.sinnfein.ie/widespread-support-for-clongriffin-to-dublin-airport-dart-route-martin-kenny-td/

He is talking as if he has only just heard about it and this is some great new idea.

https://www.nationaltransport.ie/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Fingal_North_Dublin_Transport_Study_Final_June_2015.pdf

The Fingal North Dublin Transport Study looked at it in June 2015. Essentially, the elevated approach as proposed by Irish Rail would not work.

"The multi-criteria analysis has demonstrated that HR2 is not the best public transport solution to serve the study area and performs poorly in economic terms. The scheme is more expensive than initially considered due to the requirement to provide a tunnel at the Airport to avoid impacting upon development potential."

Of course, the bould Martin knows better than the experts.

If he is the calibre of person that Sinn Fein are presenting for Ministerial purposes, I despair.

Also, the pilots that SF are claiming they want to help are the target for their "tax the rich" policy they came out with :-)

SF should keep out of it because the pilot will be screwed by them

Polls I am sure will be the answer

Oh that is a cracking one

Expect more populist nonsense that doesn't give a coherent plan so…..hopefully the media actually review their policies and try to pull them together so they show the mess they are

It is amazing how touchy their supporters are about the lack of policies.

Will be interesting to see how crazy the Sinn Fein alternative budget is this year.