I filled in as presenter on Virgin Media’ The Tonight Show a couple of weeks back, in the first shows after the election where the final composition of the new Dáil was clear, writes Gavan Reilly.
I don’t mind telling you: I do get a nerdy adrenaline rush from elections and from the drama of the counts playing out, but even that would start to wane by the Wednesday evening after a frenzied working weekend.
Even so, there was still enough energy to get through a couple of shows and to be buzzed coming out of the studio at close to midnight.
I think it was down to having a fresh cast of characters, including new TDs coming into the studio with an ideological and intellectual purity.
Is compromising on some policy worth it, if it means achieving others?
Would they be ‘propping up’ the traditional ‘big two’, or would they be holding them to account?
Is future electoral oblivion a deterrent to taking the reins when the chance presents itself?
Should that even be a consideration?
Discussing these with a fresh cast of characters — new TDs full of ambition and carried by the goodwill of an enthusiastic electorate — was refreshing.
The blank canvas of a new Dáil allows those questions to be sounded out without the baggage of compromising prior relationships.
This got me to wondering about the relatively depressed turnout in the election just gone, where the official percentage of eligible people who bothered to vote dipped below 60% for the first time in the history of the state.
The newly elected deputies might be excited about getting into Leinster House, arranging their affairs and tinkering with the formation of a new government, but the public don’t seem nearly as enthused.
For what it’s worth, I don’t think the official turnout percentage can be trusted.
Frankly, the 31 parallel registers of electors — one for every local authority — are in rag order, and there are likely hundreds of thousands of entries for voters who are dead or have long since moved and registered afresh at their new address.
But after four years of the pandemic, lockdowns, a K-shaped recession, hyperinflation and hypermigration, one would have expected an enormous appetite to finally get to the ballot box and cast a verdict on how the polycrisis was handled.
My theory is that appetite to vote was partly suppressed because, for all of Sinn Féin’s public claims to the contrary, it was plainly evident that an alternative government was not on offer.
Sinn Féin’s path to power gambled on Fianna Fáil eventually conceding to negotiate, should the Dáil numbers have required it.
That gamble failed.
Those who were happy with their lot could vote accordingly.
Those who weren’t had nowhere to turn to.
The talks now under way about government formation leave open an equally important — if not more pressing — issue for the 34th Dáil as it settles into work.
Who will be in government is the main question.
An equally important one is: who will be in opposition?
If Labour successfully convinced the Social Democrats to join them in coalition, on the premise that 22 TDs in a government of 108 could drag Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael away from their most conservative extremes, who would be left in opposition then?
Behind Sinn Féin, the largest opposition party would be Independent Ireland with just four deputies, and is a ‘party’ only in the administrative sense.
The next biggest party would be People Before Profit, whose three deputies will only ever enter a government that promises to overthrow capitalism.
If Ireland is not to enter a spiral of democratic decline, where the ‘big two’ simply remain in power forever alongside a carousel of smaller partners, a viable alternative government is an absolute necessity.
We didn’t have that in 2024, and many simply stayed away.
Stable government is a priority, but stable opposition is quickly becoming a necessity.
Photo: Mary Lou McDonald and Deputy Leader Michelle O'Neill, lead out their 2nd largest group of TD's elected in the general election to the plint at the front of Leinster House . Photo: Leah Farrell/© RollingNews.ie
