Mooney on Irish Politics

After two polls showing Fine Gael in a steady decline has the three horse race become a two horse one with Fianna Fáil and Sinn Féin competing fiercely for first place? I discuss this with former Sinn Féin MLA for Lagan Valley, Paul Butler, and get his perspective on the final few days.

Even before the Kanturk fiasco it looked like Fine Gael's highly personalised campaign, built around its leader was in trouble. Harris has just had his Gordon Brown 2010 moment... only this one is much, much worse. Can FG slide back even further? Is it now at risk of coming 3rd?

With just one week to go, I chat with Dr David McCann of the University of Ulster about government formation once the election is over. He suggests that 2.5 / 3 party governments will be the norm from here onwards. I suggest that Sinn Féin should be driving a wedge between Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael rather than pushing the FFG line.

With 8 days to geo I chat with old friend and self confessed "liberal hardline centrist" Jason O'Mahony about how he thins the election campaign has gone, so far. We discuss the part that independents may play in government formation and conclude that (counter intuitively) more independents will mean less influence.

With 10 days to go to polling day... I look at last night's RTÉ Upfront 10 podium leaders debate and conclude... there is no shortage of opposition parties... what we don't have is any alternative government.

Just under two weeks to go and any polling shifts are well within the margins of error.

The fact that voters may not have switched on to the campaign is a not a permission slip for parties to forget the lessons of the global crash and indulge in auction politics.

In this episode I am joined by Stephen Spillane of the Green party. He is a long serving political activist who knows and well understands the Cork political scene.

We do a tour of the 5 Cork constituencies and Stephen offers his insights on what to watch out for, in each.

Check out his Cork GE2024 blog

With 15 days to go… what do we know now that we didn't know before it started… well... not a lot. One of the few things I think we can say for sure is that the voters are not yet fully engaged.

In my second GE2024 podcast I look at how the Soc Dem and Labour party leaders fared in their two media outgoings and observe that Paschal Donohoe uncharacteristically rose to the bait at the housing debate on RTÉ's Upfront with Katie Hannon.

The first of my (almost) daily series of short GE2024 podcasts looking at how the Irish general election campaign is playing out. If well begun is half done... then Fine Gael's campaign isn't even 5% done.