Mail poll shows just how bad deal is for for FF, says Ó Cuív

FIANNA Fáil TD Eamon Ó Cuív has declared that if the planned programme for government is agreed, it will be ‘bad for the country’ and ‘very, very bad for Fianna Fáil’.

Mr Ó Cuív was commenting after an opinion poll by our sister paper, the Irish Mail on Sunday, found support for the party has dropped to 13%.

This week, Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the Green Party will be receiving the votes from their members on whether or not they approve the deal. The results should be announced by Friday.

However, an opinion poll in yesterday’s MoS painted a bleak picture for one of the three wouldbe coalition partners. Fine Gael’s support stood at 34%, down 2% from last month, while the Green Party is up 2% to 8%.

Fianna Fáil’s support dropped by 3% to 13%.

Reacting to these poll numbers, Mr Ó Cuív said this is ‘bad news’ for the party and ‘our vote is collapsing, we’re getting close to the margin of error bringing us into single figures’.

‘We’re failing to provide people with the alternative we promised in the general election, so is it any surprise that they’re abandoning us,’ he said.

Mr Ó Cuív said that early in the general election Fianna Fáil had

‘There are viable alternatives’

support but the more the party was seen to be similar to Fine Gael, and after going into government formation talks with the Government party, public support started to fall.

‘The very simple fact of the matter is, in the last general election we were doing well in the early part of the election. Once the public understood that voting for Fianna Fáil would likely lead to more of the same that they had rejected in 2016, they not only rejected Fine Gael but they rejected us with it and brought us down to 22%,’ he said.

‘Then when we started talking to Fine Gael and rejecting every other option, the public, according to opinion polls, have brought us down somewhere between 13% and 15%.’

Mr Ó Cuív said that the public wanted change from the Fine Gael government and feels that there are alternatives available to Fianna Fáil which need to be acted on very quickly should the deal be rejected. He said: ‘At this stage we’ve got a choice. The first thing is that we’ve a binary choice, do we support this particular proposal or not.

‘Obviously, in the event that it is not, we have to make very very quick decisions on alternatives.

‘There are alternatives there, they don’t arise until we get a result on the vote.

‘Everybody in Dáil Éireann would have an idea of what they are. In the event of any other party voting against, it would be a foolish politician who would throw their hands in the air and say there is no alternative.’

When asked if those alternatives involved the Sinn Féin party, Mr Ó Cuív said: ‘There are viable alternatives and I’m not going to speculate on that. You don’t cross bridges until you come to them.’

In yesterday’s Mail on Sunday, commenting on the 13% support for Fianna Fáil, Dr Kevin Cunningham of polling company Ireland Thinks said that the last time Fianna Fáil had this level of support was when the Trioka arrived in Ireland.

‘In 2011, Fianna Fáil were unpopular, today Fianna Fáil is irrelevant,’ said Dr Cunningham. Mr Ó Cuív added that it is ‘hard to argue with that assessment of the public’s view, given recent polling figures’.

When asked what happens to Fianna Fáil if the support continues to slip, Mr Ó Cuív said: ‘I think the future is obvious – you don’t have seats in the Dáil.’