Prime Minister Simon Harris has until March 2025 to put the question to the country, but Sinn Féin’s surprisingly poor performance in this month’s European and council elections may well encourage him to join Britain and France in holding a snap election — around the time America, too, will go to the polls.
Lawmakers in Ireland’s three-party government have told POLITICO that Harris may be tempted by Sinn Féin’s sudden weakness to press the advantage. That would mean holding the next parliamentary contest by November in hopes of keeping his Irish republican enemies out of power for another five years.
“People will reflect on the 14,000 homeless people, on the fact that [hospital] waiting lists are spiraling out of control, that rents are the highest in Europe. We just need to refocus voters’ minds on the failures of the government.”
This timing would be particularly difficult for one opposition leader, Holly Cairns of the left-wing Social Democrats. The Cork lawmaker has just announced she’s 17 weeks pregnant – meaning a due date in November.
“In my naivety, we were trying to plan around having a baby and maybe them being a year or so old before going into a general election,” she told Irish state broadcasters RTÉ. “We learned the hard way that it’s not always that easy to plan.”
Ireland once again faces four by-elections following results that will send four sitting lawmakers (Fianna Fáil’s Barry Cowen, Sinn Féin’s Kathleen Funchion, Labour’s Aodhan Ó Ríordáin and independent Michael McNamara) to the European Parliament.
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