Tag: Brendan Howlin

The referendum dominated conversations around Leinster House as people tried to make sense of it. Needless to say, politics being politics, and politicians being politicians (and campaigners being campaigners), there have been mighty claims altogether made about the referendum – most of which served the agendas of those making them. But it will change Irish politics; it already has. “We have some very, very impressive women candidates,” a senior figure in the machine end of Fine Gael told me when we exchanged pleasantries on the way into Leinster House last week. There’s a bit of hot talk in Fine Gael about capitalising on the referendum with a pre-summer general election, especially when they saw the party’s stratospheric numbers in the RTÉ exit poll. The referendum will not win an election for anyone on its own. The election, when it comes, will be won on the issues people think of as most important – housing, health, the economy, currently viewed by many voters as a question on the cost of living – and who they think will address these problems most effectively. Once the election is done, a separate though related process of putting together a government will take place. Think about the last election: you could hardly say that Fine Gael won it. As a result, Fine Gael now has a pretty good chance of forming the next government, an historic three-in-a-row that would confirm its replacement of Fianna Fáil as the natural party of government in Ireland.