Why is the Irish Labour party such a failure ?

If Labour found a decent, charismatic, principled leader… that would stay true to the primary responsibility that should be at the heart of every party in the state, of.. working their holes off to provide a fair and just, socially responsible, safe, resourceful and efficient government and associated services for the people of Ireland … our needs, requirements, wellbeing… catered to first and foremost ahead of anybody else…. They would stroll to power…

they elect however bad leaders, too much time pandering to special interest groups and enabling themselves with too many superfluous distractions that any sort of coherent message just gets lost…

The last election, Labour got 4.38 % first preference votes.

2007 - 10.13%

2011 - 19.45%

2016 - 6.61%

in 5 years, to loose more then 12%, almost 13% of your support between 2011-2016.

Bacik won’t fix that malaise… she might well make it worse…she lacks gravitas, relatability that the core Labour voter wants and that the country so desperately needs…

You're dreaming.

Labour are done, they might get a seat or two either way in the future but thats it.

She wasn't.

Maurice Cummins of FG was Leader of the Seanad for that time.

Trouble is where's that next crop is coming from? The Greens recovered after 2011 because they still had no rival ecology-like party for their vote to migrate to, whereas Labour is competing with the SDs and to a lesser extent the PBP/AAA lot.

Think I gave Jo Costello 3rd or 4th preference back in 2020 but at the time my feeling was "why are you still around?"..

I'd say Marie Sherlock will be on the ballot next time

Watched her on TV being presented to the media as the new Labour leader and I think the first thing she said was "women are still paid less than men". What women Ivana? Are you speaking from personal experience, academic staff in Trinity, Senators, TDs?

If this is an indication of where she's taking the Labour Party, identity politics, then they haven't a hope.

"I'd guess that's the old gender pay gap she's talking about there, still a very real issue for many women in many industries."

What industries?

If you do a statistical survey of wage/salary levels in any area of employment you will always find a 'gender pay gap' because men and women have in general different priorities, different interests, different responsibilities, different abilities. No doubt there are some areas where the gap is tiny or favour females but I doubt Ivana will be highlighting them. Maybe she will be more interested in industries like construction or agriculture?

Good luck if this is going to one of the main points of focus for her tenure.

Could you give any examples of sexist or misandrist statements from her please? Preferably something that hasn’t been debunked in previous discussions here on this topic,

You can be as smug as you like. She's a nonentity but treated with kid gloves by a media fearful of SF's prominence and will be pushed repeatedly by RTE and the IT as some sort of leader of the opposition. As a previous poster said, outside of her supporter cohort of white, middle class, universally educated left leaning women, she's an irrelevance.

All party leaders need to be able to reach out to as many parts of the electorate as possible. She doesn't. I cannot see her even getting re-elected.

The Labour movement have spent the last 40 years focusing on identity politics, with a resulting decrease year on year of their core support. Fine, let her carry on dictating to us about correct pronoun use or which statues to tear down. Just don't expect most of us to be listening.

If you heard the Sarah McInerney interview, you’ll realise how very far from reality your suggestion that RTE will handle her with kid gloves is.

I’m not sure she’s the best choice for Labour, but if your going to have a go, at least keep it vaguely real.

You were the one asked the question, "put your own work in" is an admission of failure to be able to answer it.