The accelerating fall in Sinn Féin support

Mary Lou has to go. She has done the party great service in the past but she is looking more and more like simply the decontamination period from Gerry Adams the Terrorist to Pearse Doherty the Taoiseach. She needs to step aside and let the party move onto the next stage.

Mary Lou had to go because she has been around too long, that's it. Gone stale.

Doherty isn’t leadership material. He’s just good for shouting and pretending to be outraged. He has almost no grasp of detail and looks like a fish out of water when he is subjected to a tough interview.

A class divide.

Let's see what the Housing Plan launch by them looks like next week. They are going to make it their election issue. Ó Brion is very much to the radical end of the party, and I sometimes think he would be better off in PBP. He might have thought that SF was a more realistic way of pushing through the sacred teachings of Marx and Lenin than PBP though.

Don't think there has ever been more of a disconnect between a party and their core support than present SF. Maybe FG back in the mid 70's.

British and capitalist when their bottom line benefits.

Completely all the place.

I very much doubt MLMD will go anywhere, plus I think SF will probably do alright when the election happens. definitely a more realistic support base now once the floaters have moved on.

What a load of humbug!

No evidence that they'll poll or elect as many as in 2020. In fact any evidence is to the contrary (elections since then and polls) unless they turn the ship. If they were to stand at 2020 level, a SF candidate would be a shoe-in in every constituency.

Voters can change in 2 months

They changed rapid from nov 19 to february 2020

Partisan Boards posters get carried away and forget these important details

The word on the ground is that many of these TD's who were elected in 2020 have not impressed on the ground and have been nowhere to be seen for years. They were lucky to be elected at the time, when there was an anti-government shift to SF.

It is expected that some of those will lose their seats.

The rising trend for SF evidenced in the second half of 2019 accelerated towards the general election, driven mainly by Wolfe Tones-type nationalism (the pub kind). This time around if a trend accelerates for SF, it is downward.

tis actually common enough in politics around the world, poor choices, but sf are truly dreadful alright, so there may never be an alternative government in ireland, tis very likely we ll see many ffg governments to come…..

ffg will be just fine for the election, no real fear from sf, i.e. the best way forward for ireland, for change to occur, is to stay the same, maybe that should be ffg's slogan!

government is doing just fine, doing what it truly was designed to do, i.e. to protect those that benefit from the accumulation of wealth, tis all good!

Have had a quick read of O'Broin's Leaving Cert project, not good enough for a pass mark, falls well short in thinking through implications and weaknesses, understates the cost, understates the obstacles, and overambitious in timing and execution. Could have scraped a pass mark only for the padding, filling out pages and pages with images, Irish translations and executive summaries to try and claim a 20-page project is a 100-page policy, I don't accept that from any student.

The nettle that needs to be grasped by everyone is that the economy cannot sustain the current rent levels. They are completely out of whack with wages. Ditto house prices. Thats the elephant in the room. Now wouldthe Sinn Fein policy gonig to do what is needed. Probably not. But grants and tax breaks and interest reliefs are not the solution when rents and house prices are at least 30-40% above what is sustainable.

Problem is look at most of the cabinet, no real experience of working in business.

Nevermind self employment and all that entails.

It's all about the multi nationals, that is who they socialise with.

The day of FG being the party of the self employed are long gone.

Lot of the tribal political headbangers on this thread, meant with the greatest respect, will not care either because SF are going on about it.

People like Blanch would condemn the curing of cancer if a Shinner did it.

It's a very boring thread where the virtually same content is written by a small few everyday with an updated version for the day.

They, no more than the cabinet could care less about the crisis in costs facing SMEs and people in general.

SMEs are by far the biggest employer in the country. Same as nearly every other country.

Lot of people who are retired, living in the past or in sectors of employment completely insulated from economic reality.