"Another day is dawning
With another bridge to cross
Another fight and one we're not afraid of
It never has been easy
And it won't be easy now
It's another chance to show what we are made of
We have fought side by side
With pride and dignity
And together we can face the future fearlessly
We've been there, we've been needed
We have fought and we've succeeded
We'll be there in the future
As we were in the past
We'll be there even longer
We'll be there even stronger
Fianna Fail for the future
And for Ireland."
-'We'll be there - A Song for Fianna Fail', Cathal Dunne
Ireland - First Past the Post Shenanigans Edition
The
Irish general election of 2017 took place on the 2nd March 2017 to elect 165 Teachtai Dalas (TDs) from each of the single member constituencies to the Dail Eireann, the lower house of the Oireachtas, Ireland's parliament. The previous Dail was dissolved by President John Waters, on the 6th February, at the request of Taoiseach Micheal Martin.
In 2013 the Fianna Fail government of Brian Lenihan, Jr. was returned for a second term in office as a majority government. Lenihan had won a large majority at the 2009 general election when he defeated the Fine Gael-Labour government of Michael Noonan which had been blamed for Ireland's dire economic straits. Lenihan's cancer diagnosis during the tenure of that Dail led to suggestions that he would resign as Taioseach and would be replaced by his deputy (Tanaiste or Deputy Prime Minister) Mary Coughlan or his Minister for External Affairs Micheal Martin - these calls were however mooted by Lenihan who made it clear he wished to remain on as party leader and as Taoiseach. Lenihan would temporarily stand down as Taoiseach while he underwent surgery for pancreatic cancer - in his place Tanaiste Mary Coughlan would serve as acting Taoiseach until Lenihan resumed office in early September 2011. Lenihan's cancer would however return and would eventually lead to his death in mid-2014 at the age of 55. In the ensuing leadership race, Micheal Martin would emerge victorious as the new Fianna Fail leader and as the new Taoiseach. Martin, while initially popular, was seen as a wooden and uncomfortable leader, owing to his tendency to try a please everyone while pleasing no one. His tendency to try and create political consensus with the opposition parties (similar to the Tallaght Strategy of Fine Gael leader Mark Clinton during the Fianna Fail minority government under Des O'Malley in the early 1990s). This however was unpopular with the party's grassroots and led some in the parliamentary party to suggest replacing Martin with either Coughlan, Eamon O Cuiv, Niall Blaney or Pat 'the Cope' Gallagher. These suggestions were however mooted as the government began to rise once again in the polls due to good economic news in 2015. Fianna Fail could take some comfort by the news that the 'National Coalition' (an electoral and occasional parliamentary arrangement between Fine Gael and Labour which dated back to the 1973 general election) was embroiled in infighting stemming from Fine Gael's new leader - Lucinda Creighton. Creighton, on the conservative wing of the party, was at odds with the more liberal elements in the party which had held sway for nearly twenty-five years. This led to friction with the more liberal and left-leaning Labour Party which saw one of its TDs, Stephen Donnelly, split off and form his own Social Democratic party. Labour and Fianna Fail however both had threats from their main republican rivals. For Labour it was the Workers' Party which by 2015 was polling as high as 7% in the polls, while Labour was polling as low as 4%. The Workers' Party, the Marxist-left of the republican movement, had seen its political fortunes improve due to the unpopularity of Labour's continued arrangement with Fine Gael, among left-leaning voters. Meanwhile Sinn Fein, a conservative republican party that could trace its direct roots back to the anti-compromise wing of the Anti-Treaty Republican Party of de Valera; it was beginning to pose a serious electoral threat to Fianna Fail, and could potentially gain several seats in the border region with Northern Ireland.
When the general election was called in February 2017, the question on everyone's lips was whether Fianna Fail could limp near to or even across the majority line of 84 seats. Over the course of the Dail sitting the party had lost several seats (and thus its precarious one seat majority) and it was judged unlikely that the party would gain any seats. Meanwhile Fine Gael was in a buoyant mood and was predicting that it could potentially break 60 seats for the first time since John Bruton's re-election twenty years prior. It was also aided by the deep pockets of conservative businessman Declan Ganley who was judged to have been promised a Seanad (Senate) seat, courtesy of the Taoiseach's nomination, if Fine Gael were returned to power. Fianna Fail meanwhile was seen to be in the exceedingly deep financial pocket of Eddie Haughey, the party's Seanad leader and the ninth richest man in the country. The main issues of the election campaign were the government's proposed tax cuts and rural subsidies - both of which were agreed to by Fine Gael, despite the latter party's insistence that they were merely electoral 'sweeteners'. While both Sinn Fein and the Workers' Party gained in the polls, Labour would only marginally gain some more votes back from the WP. The electoral arithmetic would also have to factor in several Independent TDs, in particular the Rural Independent Group, an informal 'party' which comprised of conservative-mined rural TDs (mainly from the west of Ireland), such as the Healy-Rae brothers Michael & Danny, Mattie McGrath and Mildred Fox. Smaller parties such as the Green Party, the Social Democrats and the far-right National Party also were hopeful of gains and potentially holding the balance of power in the new Dail. The debates, which included the most leaders ever - nine - were a spectacle to behold. Martin was attacked from the left, right and centre as a weak figurehead who was merely in place to prevent other more ambitious Fianna Fail TDs from gaining the leadership of the party and potentially ripping it apart. Creighton was attacked as a hardline Catholic reactionary who opposed even the growing calls even from within Fine Gael to support holding a referendum on allowing same-sex marriage in Ireland. Sinn Fein leader Peadar Toibin and WP leader Eamon Gilmore would make snide remarks at each other over who was the true heir to 1916. Healy-Rae blabbered on about farming and pot-holes in Kerry, Green leader Eamon Ryan tried to pitch for the student vote in Dublin, Social Democrat leader Stephen Donnelly waved to his ma and pa during his five minutes of fame, and National Party leader Justin Barrett opened his mouth and spewed a load of racist gobshite from it. Heading into polling day no one was really sure what exactly was going to happen.
The final result would see Fianna Fail win a reduced plurality, while Fine Gael performed respectably but failed to make good on its pre-election predictions. Sinn Fein nearly doubled its number of seats, while Labour more than halved its. The Rural Independents gained several seats out in the Gaeltacht, while the WP gained a handful of seats in Dublin. The Greens won a second seat, thus allow for Ryan to have a friend to sit at his table for lunch. Donnelly managed to easily win re-election in his Wicklow seat but didn't manage to bring any colleagues to Dublin. Barrett won a seat in North Cork owing to the incumbent Fianna Fail TD being de-selected and producing a four way split with Fine Gael-Fianna Fail-Rural Independents which enabled Barrett to win with only 32% of the vote. Labour would announce that they wouldn't support Fine Gael in government, while Sinn Fein and the WPs made clear they were reluctant to support either major party in government. Donnelly offered his support to Fianna Fail, as did Ryan. Barrett offered his support to both parties but was told in no uncertain terms where to take his support and where to shove it up. The Rural Independents Group, after internal talks resolved to support 'change' and Fine Gael. This would lead to Martin proposing, and Creighton accepting a proposal for her to form a minority government with FF-RIG support, but that it would only remain for three budgets. For the first time since the days of W.T. Cosgrave, Fine Gael was back in government at the head of a single-party minority government. Only time would tell if Creighton would be another successful Fine Gael leader in the vein of John Bruton or John Costello, or if she would be a literal lead balloon like Michael Noonan or Richard Burke.