Paul Hosford: Sinn Féin will hope it's their pitch to the middle class that is heard loudest
Sinn Féin president Mary Lou McDonald launching the party's election manifesto, 'The Choice for Change' at Smock Alley Theatre in Dublin on Tuesday. Picture: Niall Carson/PA
Ireland, Sinn Féin contends, is a country of haves and have not.
In many ways, that’s impossible to argue. We are, like many western economies, a country where some live with massive wealth and others worry about how to feed their children. We are a country with one of the highest nominal GDPs per capita in the world, but there are 14,000 people homeless.
In the middle of those are many people who are able to get by. Some have a little extra left over, some have a decent amount of disposable cash, and there’s a cohort of people who are genuinely relatively happy with how the country is going.
On Tuesday, Sinn Féin made its pitch to those people.
The party has traditionally polled well with working-class people but has found itself facing attacks from Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil that it would upset the applecart for middle-income earners, that a Sinn Féin government would reset the economic model and thus come after you and yours.
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Asked what the party pitch would be to those people, Mary Lou McDonald said that she was happy to see people doing well, that her party did not like that people were struggling.
But, she said, even a large portion of those that are nominally “doing well” are struggling.
“I would suggest to you that a very substantial number of people are struggling, including those that, let it be said, who are up early, as they say, and going to work. Between mortgage, if you have one, rent, if you can afford to rent, to childcare costs.
“Most people will tell you now, if you ask them, ‘how are you managing? Do you feel better off now than you did five years ago?’, people will tell you ‘no’, that everything has gone up. Insurance costs, childcare costs for lots of people too.
“So what we want to do, in the bigger scheme of things, is to create a society in which services are available to you, in which having a roof over your head is not considered a luxury, but a basic human necessity, and where things that happen in life, whether it’s ill health, you can access a GP, where your child can access a dentist, and, if you are a family, if you’re a parent of a child with a disability, or if you’re a disabled person yourself, that you do not wake up every single morning to go to battle for the basic things that you are entitled to.”
If the party leader’s response was grand vision — a win for everyone — her finance spokesperson Pearse Doherty’s was more pragmatic, more about the pocket.
“Our commitment is very clear,” he said. “For every individual out there that’s earning up to €100,000, you’re going to be better off under Sinn Féin. You will pay less tax. Indeed, our tax package will benefit you over €2,000 of tax reductions between the USC, our bands, and our credits, but those individuals won’t just benefit from that.
“If you have one child in childcare, as has been pointed out, the benefit to you from the measure that we’re going to introduce and have in place for September of next year is €7,200 for every child you have in childcare.
"So immediately, people are benefiting not just from our tax package, but also our childcare package, the abolition of the local property tax, getting rid of the TV licence, making sure that your petrol and diesel has not been increased.”
This was not just about those struggling, the Donegal man said, this was for everyone.
The document proposes to cap childcare at €10 a day by next September, an abolition of USC on the first €45,000 earned, and the end of third-level fees among other proposals.
Launching the 180-page document in Dublin, party leader Mary Lou McDonald told voters that her party was the “only one who can deliver a change in government” and asking the public to “give us that chance”, which is reflective of the party’s pitch as the election enters its closing days.
The overall message from Sinn Féin is that Ireland can do better, but only through a change of government.
The party’s housing plan, published last month, sets out targets of building 370,000 homes within five years, 75,000 of those being social and 50,000 either affordable rent or purchase as well as a plan to deliver homes for around €250,000 on state lands. The party would phase out the help to buy scheme and would use what spokesperson Eoin Ó Broin said was “the stick” around those who sit on vacant homes.
“Hoarding land in a housing crisis is like hoarding food in a famine,” Mr Ó Broin said.
In health, outgoing Waterford TD David Cullinane said that the party would deliver:
- Free prescription medication for all;
- Median-income health cards;
- Full public health coverage by 2035.
Mr Doherty said the abolition of USC under €45,000 would cost €1.84bn and that the party would introduce a mini budget in the first 100 days of its government in order to enact its USC cut and childcare plan.
It is a grand vision, one which would add €14.3bn in current and €41.8bn in capital spending above what is currently planned, financial plans which have been criticised by the Government for a “piggy bank heist” — a charge Mr Doherty said was giving him “a reddener” on behalf of Paschal Donohoe.
But the little things often trip you up and, having dealt with a charge that she avoids media scrutiny, Ms McDonald was asked to answer why Sinn Féin wants to appoint an “independent human rights and journalistic expert reviewinto the objectivity of coverage by RTÉ of the Israeli genocide in Gaza and other international conflicts” if elected.
Asked if it was appropriate for any political party to promise to intervene in the work of RTÉ, Ms McDonald said that this was merely a case of seeking to ensure “trust” in the broadcaster.
“We talk a lot about where people access their information and trusted sources of information. And this is a challenge in a world where news and comment is now 24/7 and it’s coming at people from all directions,” she said.
“The conflict in Gaza is particularly cited because, obviously it is horrific what we are viewing, and we are viewing it through the prism of the television screen. It is a genocide that is being televised, and we think it’s a healthy thing and a necessary thing for conflicts and events like that that have such immense significance and consequences, that there is an exercise like that in oversight,” she added.
Peer review and self-reflection should be part of all media organisations, but it should not be government-mandated, surely?
Given such a grand vision around how the party views the most essential services, leaving itself open to charges of wanting to politically control the editorial functions of the national broadcaster is a strange hill on which to perish.
Sinn Féin will have to hope that it is its pitch to the middle-classes that is heard loudest.
