Discover Top Posts Tagged with #irish pol

The party has traditionally joined the Government in the White House for St Patrick's Day events

Sinn Féin will not travel to the White House for St Patrick's Day, Mary Lou McDonald has announced. Ms McDonald and Northern Ireland First Minister Michelle O’Neill, the Sinn Fein vice president, made the announcement on Friday, citing “a principled stance against the threat of mass expulsion of the Palestinian people from Gaza”. The party has traditionally joined the Government in the White House for St Patrick's Day events. Speaking on Friday, Ms McDonald said: “I followed with growing concern what’s happening on the ground in Gaza and the West Bank, and like many other Irish people, have listened in horror to calls from the President of the United States for the mass expulsion of the Palestinian people from their homes and the permanent seizure of Palestinian lands.” She added: “There is also an onus on us to speak honestly and to act when we believe a US administration is wrong, catastrophically so in the case of Palestine. “I’ve thought deeply about this issue in recent days, and listen to many voices inside and outside of Sinn Féin. “I’ve made the decision not to attend the event in the White House this year as a principled stance against the call for the mass expulsion of the Palestinian people from Gaza, something which I believe demands serious dissent and objection.”

#ireland #us #irish pol #sinn féin #st patrick's day #white house visit #cancelled #us gaza stance

Barrett said that the bill should not be further delayed because of “bullying” from across the Atlantic.

People Before Profit leader Richard Boyd Barrett has said that Ireland should not back away from the Occupied Territories Bill to appease the US or Donald Trump. As Trump’s return to the White House looms ahead of his inauguration on 20 January, Barrett said that the bill should not be further delayed because of “bullying” from across the Atlantic. The Occupied Territories Bill would make it an offence to import or sell goods, services or resources originating in illegal settlements anywhere in the world, which would include illegal settlements in Palestine. It was introduced to the Dáil in 2018 but has been stalled in the pipeline for years. Fine Gael previously argued that the bill would break EU trade law (though some legal experts refuted the validity of this position), but after an International Court of Justice opinion declared all Israeli settlements in Palestine illegal in July 2024, the Attorney General briefed the government on the contextual impact of the ruling and the government’s position reportedly changed.

#ireland #irish pol #us pol #israeli-occupied palestine #occupied territories bill

Ireland’s far-right candidates grew their vote share compared to 2020.

Now that the dust has settled on the general election, it’s clear that far-right candidates did not have a good campaign. By our calculations, around 70 such candidates stood in 40 constituencies in the election, either as independents, as members of the three-party National Alliance, or as members of Ireland’s two other far-right parties who didn’t take part in the alliance. They included members of the anti-immigrant movement, anti-vaxxers, conspiracy theorists, and self-described “citizen journalists” from groups which have all become more prominent since Ireland’s last general election in 2020. Four years ago, there were just two registered far-right parties in Ireland (the Irish Freedom Party and the National Party) and no far-right candidate got more than 2% of first preference votes in the general election. But the upward trajectory of the movement, buoyed by two years of anti-immigrant protests, saw several candidates breach the 2% figure from 2020 during the local elections in June, when five far-right politicians took seats on councils in Dublin and Kildare. It was no surprise then that many fancied their chances of rattling Ireland’s establishment for a second time in 2024. Ultimately, none of these candidates won a seat in the 34th Dáil, a fact that has been heralded by opponents of extreme politics as a rejection of the far-right’s message and values. Why did they do so badly this time around?

#ireland #irish pol #general election 2024 #far-right candidates #fail

Fianna Fáil is on track to secure 8-10 seats more than Fine Gael and has again become the largest party in the country

Micheál Martin has completed a remarkable turnaround for Fianna Fáil to be on the brink of becoming Taoiseach again. Fianna Fáil is on track to secure 8-10 seats more than Fine Gael and has again become the largest party in the country in what is being viewed as a personal victory for the Cork South Central politician. Mr Martin brought the party from its lowest ebb in 2011 — when it suffered the worst performance of a sitting government party in the history of the state — and he later withstood calls to resign after another weak election in 2020. After the weekend's vote, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael combined will now be close to the threshold of forming a majority in the next Dáil. Fianna Fáil is projected to secure 48 seats, with Fine Gael on 38, and Sinn Fein on 40. As the final seats are filled, both Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald and Labour leader Ivana Bacik have said they will both speak to like-minded parties in a bid to form a coalition of the left.

#ireland #irish pol #general election 2024 #fianna fáil win

A handful of far-right councillors were elected in June, but could Ireland soon have its first far-right TD?

Three far-right political parties and some independent candidates have joined forces to create a new alliance ahead of the general election. The National Alliance consists of the National Party, Ireland First and The Irish People, as well as a number of independents. The Irish Freedom Party is not part of the alliance. Supporters are being encouraged to transfer their votes among members in the election, in a bid to elect Ireland’s first far-right TD. The parties involved share extreme anti-immigration and anti-abortion views. A statement on its website says the alliance’s mission is “to uphold the principles that put the Irish people and their needs first, standing firm in the battle between globalism and nationalism”. The website also promotes the ‘Great Replacement’ conspiracy theory (more on that below). The alliance is led by councillor Patrick Quinlan, deputy leader of the National Party; Derek Blighe, president of Ireland First; and Anthony (AJ) Cahill of The Irish People. Quinlan was elected to Fingal County Council in June, but Blighe and Cahill were unsuccessful in their efforts to get elected earlier this year. Figures compiled by The Journal found that more than 100 people stood for far-right parties or as far-right independents in the local elections in June. Of these, five were elected:

Sinn Fein lost its commanding lead earlier this year. Sinn Féin and Fine Gael are polling in second place, with Fianna Fáil only slightly ahead. I suspect SF lost quite a few to the far-right, anti-migrant, anti-abortion crowd.

#ireland #irish pol #general elections 2024 #far-right coalition

James O’Connor said the measure is needed to address migration issues.

A Fianna Fáil TD has called for gardai to be deployed to check points on the border to deal with a reported increase in migrants entering from Northern Ireland. The comments from James O’Connor came as tensions between London and Dublin have increased in recent days. This followed Justice Minister Helen McEntee claiming there had been an upsurge in asylum seekers crossing the border from the UK into the Republic of Ireland after the passing of the Safety of Rwanda Act at Westminster. The government has made it clear that it does not intend to deploy gardai to the border to monitor the issue. Asked during the week on whether gardaí will be carrying out checks along the border, Taoisesach Simon Harris said: “Of course there won’t be.” However, speaking to RTÉ Radio One’s This Week programme, O’Connor urged a re-think. “I would be quite forthright that we do need to see a further rapid expansion of border policing around migration,” the Cork East TD said. “This is something that I feel is not being done sufficiently and I do feel that we need to take the bull by the horns here and address it because we have to look after people that come here, but we do need to acknowledge that there is a tipping point where we can’t do that any more.”

And so begins the rightwards journey of Irish politics to counter the rise of the far-right. Well, that's worked so well in some other EU states, they now either have fascist governments or will have shortly.

Immigration controls at the borders will be an exercise in racial profiling, relegating Black and Brown Irish and British citizens to second class citizens.

#ireland #irish pol #uk pol #irish border #immigration controls suggested

Leo Varadkar's departure as head of the three-party coalition does not automatically trigger a general election

Leo Varadkar has announced he will step down as Ireland’s prime minister and the leader of the governing Fine Gael party. The Taoiseach confirmed his resignation at a press conference outside Government Buildings in Dublin shortly after 12pm, describing his tenure as “the most fulfilling time of my life”. Mr Varadkar said his reasons for stepping down were “both personal and political” and that he believed a new party leader would be better placed to fight the next general election. [...] Mr Varadkar’s departure as head of the three-party coalition, which also includes Fianna Fail and the Green Party, does not automatically trigger a general election. In 2017, he became the first gay prime minister of Ireland and the youngest person to hold the office. At the 2020 general election, Mr Varadkar led his party to a third-place finish in terms of seats in the Dáil Éireann, the lower house of Ireland’s parliament.

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#ireland #irish pol #varadkar resignation

The irony may be that Nigel Farage has done more for unification than generations of Republicans, says journalist John Walsh

A week before the Brexit vote on 23 June 2016, a reporter from an Irish radio station caught up with Nigel Farage on the campaign trail. He asked the Ukip leader if Britain’s departure from the EU would have any implications for the island of Ireland. “Don’t worry, we’ll still buy your Guinness,” replied Farage, which chimed with the leave side’s broader dismissal of the consequences for the Good Friday agreement arising from the vote. As it turned out, Brexit had a profound impact on Ireland – not least that it put the constitutional question firmly on the table. Before the Brexit referendum, very few people expected a border poll on Irish unity to take place within the following 25 to 50 years. Northern Ireland was settling into peaceful coexistence. Once implacable foes, the DUP and Sinn Féin ruled together in a power-sharing administration. But everything changed the day after the result was called: Martin McGuinness, the Sinn Féin deputy first minister of Northern Ireland, called for a border poll. For the first time in living memory, the main political parties in Dublin began addressing the issue of Irish unity. The genius of the Good Friday agreement is that it smoothed over grievances that had plunged Northern Ireland into decades of bloody conflict. People could choose to be British, Irish, Northern Irish, European, or all of these. What’s more, the border between the six counties of Northern Ireland with the 26-county southern state – a source of deep antagonism for many in the nationalist community – had been made invisible through the UK and Ireland’s common membership of the EU. -Brexit sundered the legislative underpinning of the historic 1998 peace accord. People were once again forced to choose between being British or Irish as the UK’s exit from the bloc undermined Northern Ireland’s “shared space” that enabled people to have fluid identities.

The only people forced to choose nationalities were those who held British passports and even then they only had to apply for an Irish passport (assuming they, or their parents/grandparents, had been born in the north of the island) and become dual nationals. The Good Friday Agreement guarantees that. Those holding only Irish passports were never going to get a British one in the first place, and vice versa.

#island of ireland #irish pol #ni pol #uk pol #irish unification #brexit