Election campaign to formally start in Ireland with dissolution of Dail

Taoiseach Simon Harris will ask President of Ireland Michael D Higgins to dissolve the Parliament ahead of a polling date on Friday November 29.

Fine Gael leader Simon Harris at Aras an Uachtarain meeting the President of Ireland Michael D Higgins (PA) (PA Archive)

The Irish General Election campaign will formally begin later on Friday when Taoiseach Simon Harris asks the President of Ireland to formally dissolve the Dail.

The dissolution of the Parliament will trigger the start of what will be a relatively short three-week campaign ahead of polling day on Friday November 29.

Fine Gael leader Mr Harris will go to President Michael D Higgins’s residence at Aras an Uachtarain in Dublin’s Phoenix Park to undertake the formalities required to call an election under the country’s constitution.

It will bring to an end the four-and-a-half-year lifespan of the historic Fine Gael, Fianna Fail and Green Party coalition government.

After the 2020 general election delivered an inconclusive result, Fine Gael and Fianna Fail, two parties forged from opposing sides of Ireland’s Civil War of the 1920s, agreed to set aside almost a century of animosity and share power.

The Green Party joined the administration as a junior partner.

Fianna Fail leader Micheal Martin held the position of Taoiseach for the first half of the mandate, with Fine Gael’s Leo Varadkar taking over as premier in December 2022.

Mr Varadkar resigned from the role earlier this year and was succeeded by his party colleague Mr Harris.

Since the 2020 poll, the coalition in Dublin has had to grapple with the same global shocks that confronted many governments around the world – the Covid-19 pandemic and the inflation crisis sparked by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Ireland has also experienced a surge in migration numbers in the last two years, in large part due to the tens of thousands of Ukrainian refugees who sought safe haven in the country.

There have also been increased rates of asylum seekers arriving from elsewhere in the world.

This, coupled with post-recession, pre-existing housing shortages, has placed unprecedented strain on state accommodation provision, leading to tensions and disputes in some local areas over plans to repurpose hotels and other buildings into facilities for international protection applicants.

The rise of the migration issue up the political agenda has come at a time when the Government continues to grapple with what itself has acknowledged is a crisis in housing.

Despite the coalition’s efforts to increase the number of state-built homes and promote policies to support renters and first-time buyers, record homelessness figures are still on the rise and house prices and rental costs remain stubbornly high as demand consistently outweighs supply in many areas, particularly in the capital Dublin.

To the Government’s critics, the housing crisis appears paradoxical when set in the context of booming public finances, with the state’s coffers now buoyed each year by billions of euros in tax receipts from multinational giants who have set up bases in Ireland.

The same argument is made when it comes to problems besetting some parts of the country’s health service, such as the lengthy waits endured by children requiring spinal surgery.

The Government parties say real progress has been delivered in housing and healthcare provision during a mandate that ends with the country’s finances in rude health.

Sinn Fein won the popular vote in 2020 but a failure to run enough candidates meant it did not secure sufficient seats in the Dail to give it a realistic chance of forming a government.

The main opposition goes into the election on the back of a difficult number of weeks, having faced intense criticism over its handling of several controversies related to allegations and complaints against party members.

In the last 12 months the party has also seen its poll ratings dip quite significantly, dropping from front runner to leave it trailing behind both Fine Gael and Fianna Fail in a series of recent polls.