Sinn Fein’s housing policy drives record popularity

When leader Mary Lou McDonald stood before Sinn Féin’s annual conference in October, she said that things had “gone to the dogs” under Ireland’s traditional parties. “We are the party of change,” she asserted.

Voters appear to be listening. Sinn Féin has successfully fashioned itself as champion, not just of the working-class and supporters of a united Ireland, but of the key issue hurting many of the country’s 5m population, especially young people: unaffordable or unavailable housing.

That policy is now paying dividends: Sinn Féin has seen its support rise to a historic high of 35 per cent, according to a new Irish Times poll by Ipsos/MRBI released on Friday.

Not only is it far ahead of Ireland’s two traditional rivals, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, both of which muster 20 per cent, but leftwing Sinn Féin is also far outstripping them among middle-aged and middle-class voters. As well as the squeezed, who hope the untested party will deliver a better future, the poll found support among nearly a third of voters aged over 35 and over a quarter of the middle class.

“They’re very professionalised, they’re very on-message, they’re very effective opposition and they’re offering a message of hope, a Nirvana-like future,” said Gail McElroy, a political-science professor at Trinity College Dublin. “We’re 21 months into a pandemic . . . people are tired and [Sinn Féin] have this great message of change and hope.”

Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and Cumann na nGaedheal (Fine Gael’s forerunner) have supplied every Irish government since the state’s inception in 1922 and are currently in coalition with the Green party.

The unlikely threesome was hammered out despite Sinn Féin winning the popular vote in elections last year. It was shut out of government because for many, its links to republican paramilitaries during three decades of sectarian strife in Northern Ireland’s Troubles made it too toxic.

The party’s populist spending and tax-the-rich plans spook Ireland’s wealthy. Its past has also put it off-limits to people, even among its core constituencies, who remember the Troubles. As one former senior trade unionist put it: “I would rather die than vote Sinn Féin.”

Ireland’s elections are not due until February 2025, but Sinn Féin is widely expected to cement its position as the most popular party both north and south on the island by winning elections in Northern Ireland, a devolved UK region, next May.

Still, analysts caution against seeing a victory in Ireland as inevitable.

“I wouldn’t say they’re unstoppable,” said David Higgins at financial consultancy Carraighill, who said the ruling parties’ fatigue mirrored trends seen in grand coalitions in Germany, Austria and the Netherlands.

But he noted: “They’re not just gaining at the expense of government parties, they’re gaining at the expense of other opposition parties. It points to Sinn Féin’s success in communicating a very clear policy on housing.”

The average age of a first-time homebuyer in Ireland has now risen to 34, from 29 15 years ago, because of high prices and scant supply. “I know people who are beginning to look favourably on Sinn Féin — it does come back to housing”, Higgins said of 30-something peers in well-paid financial jobs.

Although the economy is booming — Ireland was the only EU country to grow in 2020 and is headed for 15 per cent GDP growth this year — voters’ concerns show “not everyone’s boat has been raised by economic buoyancy,” said McElroy.

But Kevin Cunningham, a lecturer in politics at Technological University Dublin, said even diehard Sinn Féin fans may not see eye-to-eye. Young people, for example, may like the party’s promises to solve the housing crisis but disagree with its opposition to carbon taxes.

Meanwhile, Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil together are still polling 40 per cent, with time to cash in on job growth and a cap on rent rises.

But McDonald will be hoping, as she told her party faithful, that “the writing is on the wall”.

Letter in response to this article:

Blame property owners for lack of affordable housing / From Jonathan Malone, Singapore