New Year, new Dáil term: Here are five immediate challenges

ANEW political year beckons and with a fresh set of newish political challenges for the Government and opposition alike. We are guaranteed two major elections in the local and European elections in June, and perhaps another – the big one – a general election as well.

Even if the Dáil continues up to the 2025 deadline, our electorate has 14 months at most to assess its options, and our politicians have even less time to influence their decisions.

As such, the Irish Mail on Sunday looks at five of the most pressing problems facing our political elite as the political temperature gauge climbs ever higher.

Referendums

Two referendums – one to change a reference to the centrality of the family and another to address the reference to a woman’s place in the home – will be held on March 8, International Women’s Day.

Language matters, particularly in the Constitution. In 1937 Eamon De Valera wrote a Constitution stating that, ‘by her life within the home, woman gives to the State a support without which the common good cannot be achieved’.

It is hard to disagree with Equality Minister Roderic O’Gorman assessment that this wording is an ‘archaic and sexist reference [which] has contributed nothing good to the lives of women in this country’. This reference would be deleted and replaced with modern language referring to the family.

With the other referendum, to change the definition of family, it is already feared by the civil service that the deletion of a reference to the foundational importance of marriage would cause problems.

A friend of mine in the US has more than 10 powerful handguns in the house. The US constitutional amendment that permits this reads: ‘A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.’ That shows how language can be interpreted to suit agendas that the constitution didn’t intend.

Cabinet was told late last year that replacing the constitutional importance of marriage with ‘marriage or another durable relationship’ will cause difficulties in that other major matter, immigration. Mandarins said they fear this will encourage foreign nationals to come into Ireland to reunite with anyone with whom they are in a ‘durable relationship’.

Immigration

Anti-terror police in Italy are studying video of a huge crowd giving the fascist salute in Rome last week, 80 years after the fall of Mussolini.

Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald told the Irish Daily Mail last month she was ‘very struck’ that ‘lots of reasonable people’ are ‘very concerned’ about the admission of refugees. They tell Ms McDonald: ‘They say, well, I’m on a housing list, or my daughter or my grandchild can’t get accommodated. So how is this going to work, when more people are coming to the country?’

The far right will make immigration THE election issue in Europe and elsewhere, and the far left has indicated it will do the same here. Ireland is finally getting its ideological division in politics – be careful what you wish for.

Yet Ms McDonald is right when she says Government mismanagement has made a problem into a crisis. The Government had no plan to house the massive influx of refugees from Ukraine and the main objective of the Departments of Justice, Housing and Integration was to shift the blame and responsibility to one another. U-turns under pressure from protesters are always counterproductive. It will be the chaos of mismanagement that dictates the electorate’s assessment of the Government on this matter.

Justice

Not, of course, disconnected from the rising community tensions and disorder due to immigration is justice as a whole. The Minister for Justice, Helen McEntee, may have been saved by an ill-timed and incoherent motion of no confidence from Sinn Féin. The public had decided to back the Government and gardaí in the face of reprehensible street violence by thugs.

Sinn Féin had initially expressed a lack of confidence in Garda Commissioner Drew Harris but then didn’t include him in the motion. It is impossible for anyone to ignore the fact that the IRA murdered Drew Harris’s father and Sinn Féin itself still has violent thugs in its ranks.

Again, the mistakes of the opposition will pale in comparison to the institutional failings of the Department of Justice and Garda management who last year lost control of the capital’s streets and the countryside’s boreens to racists. There aren’t enough gardaí and they aren’t properly equipped; we don’t need Dáil debates to reinforce the obvious. It is unlikely that either McEntee or Harris will get to the end of the year in their jobs.

Local and Euro elections

The soothsayers believe these ‘set in calendar’ elections could determine the timing of the next general election, as a good performance by the Coalition parties might spur them to go early. As Sinn Féin is going from such a low base, an encouraging centrist performance is next to impossible, particularly in the case of Fine Gael. In power since 2011, FG is going to do badly in every and any election no matter when it’s held. The leader just isn’t a ‘wartime’ leader and he’s lost a quarter of his Dáil team a year out. Once again it is immigration that will be at the fore, with local candidates espousing antiimmigrant views possibly performing above expectations, which will change permanently the political dynamic on this issue.

Housing

The unending fascination of politics stems from its unpredictability. Who, four years ago, would have foreseen that justice and immigration would have overtaken housing as the principal factors in Irish politics?

There is a change of narrative here, however illogically, as there is something of a conspiracy in Government to stop talking housing down. The headline data remains bad but a lot of building activity is visible. Industry forecaster Euroconstruct estimates 31,000 homes will be built here this year, ahead of the 29,000 predicted, and 33,000 could be built next year. The organisation, which operates in 19 European countries, says Ireland will be the only one where building will grow, by 7.9%. This is good news. But is it too little, too late?