Under Sinn Féin, will HSE head be earning €420k for a failing vaccine rollout?
Forget Northern Ireland, Sinn Féin covet power in the south. But if they gain it, what will they do?
IT WAS a gruelling assignment in the enchanting but dangerous Central American country of El Salvador. There had been an earthquake, of 6.6 on the Richter scale, and I was covering the devastation. An armed gang carjacked a Jeep we’d been using – we’d changed cars but it was a terrifying experience for the drivers. I escaped the adventures unscathed, bar most of my clothes being stolen in the Jeep. I grabbed a few pairs of shorts and random T-shirts at the airport in Honduras and, undeterred, proceeded to some well-earned rest and recreation in Miami.
The US Immigration Officer with an Irish surname in Miami was indispensably helpful. As he stamped my passport he asked: ‘You going into downtown Miami, sir?’
‘I most certainly am.’
‘You might want to change that T-shirt.’
The T-shirt was emblazoned with the famous Guerrillero Heroico photograph of Che Guevara. The image is everywhere in South and Central America. The Marxist guerrilla helped liberate Cuba and the Argentinian man of violence became an icon. Yet, to Cubans exiled to Miami he is a mass murdering communist terrorist and a figure of hate. But then the West often overlooks the crimes of leftist heroes.
SINN Féin stands in the doorway of power in the Republic of Ireland. They will capitalise on the abject failure of the establishment political parties to confront their errors. There are failings in our country that have been with us so long that the majority now accept that Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and Labour are unable, or unwilling, to solve them. The health service will return to its normal state of tragic incompetence after the pandemic. Our State’s dysfunctional management of property and housing caused an unprecedented crash 13 years ago. Still, the provision of the basic right of affordable, decent housing is beyond the capabilities of the State.
Elsewhere, historically, after decades of Establishment failure, the hard left came to power. The modern incarnation of Sinn Féin cannot be accused of being a trojan horse for a communist regime.
It would also be tragically naïve for us to believe that the party’s role as the political wing of a secret terrorist organisation, the Provisional IRA, does not have a legacy. There is no internal democracy in the party. The modern Sinn Féin has never had a vote to elect the leader. There is no open disclosure on their shadowy fundraising activities. The party’s handling of bullying and sexual abuse scandals in recent years has been lamentable. There remains a whiff of menace about Sinn Féin. And TDs like David Cullinane, Brian Stanley and Martin Browne revel in the IRA’s dark reputation.
Crucially, we know little about what Sinn Féin will do in power. The party’s most impressive figure, housing spokesman Eoin Ó Broin, is certainly a socialist. The party is a democratic socialist party. Their leader, Mary Lou McDonald, tried to form an alliance of the left after Election 2020. For this election aspects of the party’s manifesto, while not Das Kapital, were of a red hue. A blanket commitment to freeze rent for three years is dangerously close to the dreaded communist policy of price control. Yet, the party commits to build 100,000 homes over five years. This will include council housing and affordable homes for renters and first-time buyers. At a cost of €6.5bn. I doubt the cost, but I don’t doubt that if anyone can finally bring sanity to the housing nightmare, it is Sinn Féin.
The manifesto says: ‘We will introduce a 5% levy on individual incomes above €140,000, and remove tax credits from individual incomes above €140,000, tapered at a rate of 2.5% for every €1,000 above €100,000’.
If you’re a high earning landlord, look out, Sinn Féin are coming. Do we doubt that if Sinn Féin gets into power the disgraceful salaries of senior civil servants and semi-state executives will finally be confronted? Will the head of the HSE, Paul Reid, be earning €420,000 to head a failed vaccine rollout under a Sinn Féin government?
But predictions that Sinn Féin would bring Irish policy to the left are flimsy. Sinn Féin isn’t even a committed party of the left.
While trying to form a coalition of the left after the 2020 election it was, in tandem, seeking to form a coalition with that monument to Establishment power, Fianna Fáil.
THE Irish electorate believes Sinn Féin deserves a shot. After trying, and being let down by, everyone else, they will give it to them. Privately, establishment TDs tell me that all is not lost. Sinn Féin will be exposed by the media, they say. (It is true they will endure greater scrutiny). There will be a boom in economic fortunes after the pandemic. (This could provide some aid to Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael). Sinn Féin will overshoot and may run too many candidates. (We’ll see. They have previous, like in Donegal in 2016). However, much of this is gallows optimism.
For what we witnessed in Election
2020 was the greatest readjustment in electoral politics in our history. It put even Fianna Fáil’s 2011 collapse in the shade.
If you doubt it, go look at the astonishing vote tallies they achieved in a wide variety of constituencies such as Waterford, Dublin Bay North, Tipperary. The numbers don’t lie.
So anxious to find a precedent to help predict their future actions, some observers look to Sinn Féin’s participation in the government of the Northern Executive.
The Executive in the North is the manifestation of one of the most successful peace processes ever seen but it is not a normal government. Two parties, Sinn Féin and the Democratic Unionist Party, are tied together by force in an administration that has only devolved and limited powers. The British government has ultimate control, over finance and foreign policy, the primary expressions of sovereignty.
Make no mistake, Sinn Féin is a party of power. It’s just that it hasn’t attained that yet.
We can shiver at the thoughts of Sinn Féin getting its hands on the Departments of Justice and Finance. We can warn of imagined repercussions.
But we will not know until they get into power what they will do.
Ireland is a country that has snubbed extremes, and Sinn Féin understands this as well as any.
Will they overthrow the Establishment, only to end up becoming it?