Social Democrats

But do the SDs want to be in a position where they can be accused of colluding with the 'Civil War' parties to keep SF out? Would that not fatally tarnish their 'new broom' appeal? Greens wouldn't care, they would go in with FF & FG again if they could plausibly claim those parties were making a better pitch on green issues than SF. Probably being unduly Machiavellian here, but could Holly be preparing the ground to pull the same move?

FG and FF have a considerable conservative element that has been overlooked by Varadkar and Martin. Both these "leaders" decided to chace the socially liberal vote at the expense of that conservative element in both parties. FF is now a centre Right party as is FG. The SocDems are more centrre Left. If the SocDem surge is maintained then this may represent the Big Three model of Irish politics (where no two of the Big Three parties had enough seats to form a government on their own) changing to a more traditional Left/Right axis with SF and the SocDems being on the Left and FFG being on the Right. Labour is also a Right of centre party now and abandoned any Working Class voters and supporters long ago. It has no unique selling point and as a result it is getting squeezed by the emergence of the SocDems.

Regards...jmcc

I dont see FFG as centre right.

All of their social policies on welfare, crime, immigration etc are very much centre left.

Do you see the Soc Dems becoming a major party though?

I am not seeing that happening any time soon, realistically.

SF FF FG are the only 3 majors.

All the rest are unlikley to pick up mlre than low single digit seats.

Addressing the housing issue is likley to be the only way forward for any minor party.

But what is SocDem policy on this?

I'd be interested to hear what she has to say about the dairy industry, unlike her colleagues in Dublin and Kildare Holly is living in an area where there are a lot of dairy farmers and in turn companies who rely on dairy farming for their own businesses.

Chances are she will steer away from that one and start putting the boot into beef production with is what farmers on the west coast concentrate on because the land quality isn't as good and she probaly knows the SDs have little or no chance of success in rural areas.

Holly's mother raises a few beef cattle, so Galwayguy your looking for a wedge that isn't there. West Cork traditionally always had a Labour seat. HC will increase her vote next time with her much higher profile.

...ah shur everyone is gonna use it against ffg, but the only problem is, nobody actually knows what to do about it, it has been allowed to fester for so long now, we dont know how to resolve this one, im expecting it to continue indefinitely, probably into the next decade unfortunately....

...yup, a catastrophic failure, and theyre still unwilling to accept it as well, theyre gonna fall hard....

ireland badly needs new parties, im really glad to see the slow growth of the sd's, the left globally really needs a major reboot, and i suspect its starting to happen, but this wont come easy, the issues that have been created from the ideological beliefs of the last few decades are serious and complex, its gonna take time to resolve them, but citizens patience is quickly running out, and understandable so, lets hope we dont go to the extremes!

Its easy to use it against the govt, but what we need is solutions?

Moaning at the "govt without a plan" does not a plan make.

There is a lot of criticism of vulture funds, but we have to remember that those funds are enabling home building.

The costs are so high to deliver property that it can be unviable for a developer to go ahead with a housing scheme unless they have a contract with an investment fund.

Those apartments, once built, may well end up as rental only, but they still house people and are part of the broader solution.

If we banned investment funds tomorrow, we would see a reduction in new home building, not an increase!

The govt does need to build social and affordable homes. True. But they need to do that in partnership with private investment to deliver the desired number of homes annually.

Two output streams will deliver more than one output stream, so long as the two are not competing.

I think the broader question is where would a govt get additional funding to build more social housing? over 6% of expenditure already goes on housing. So where would the SocDems, for example, get the extra money and who would lose out?

Or, what policies would they change to reduce the cost and red tape linked to provision of new homes?

If they cant answer those questions then they arent capable of changing a thing.

I am surprised that more unhappy Green Party Councillors and TDs haven't defected to the Soc Dems. I think there's some unhappy people in both the Greens and Labour that the Soc Dems could really do with adding to their ranks.

I also think the SDs should to be more proactive in approaching them, and I mean really going after them to join them. Its easier to get an established councillor to become a TD than trying to run a TD with no councillor experience first. It does happen, but its very difficult.

Realistically the SDs only have 6 TDs because of bad GE campaign management by SF and they wont make that mistake again, even if they have to stick paper candidates in everywhere, they will. If SF run multiple candidates in constituencies I think the SDs will lose seats not gain them.

The other issue is money. The SDs as a young party don't have a war chest of any description, they don't appear to have wealthy donors or supporters with deep pockets. The sad truth is it costs money to run candidates. You either need wealthy candidates who can afford to take on this tremendous financial burden, or the party pays. The SDs cant pay.

Well not much tbqh as there's a lot of overlap but if they're unhappy then there's a good viable alternative to jump to if you really want to stick two fingers up to your party that aren't doing it for you!

That 9% opinion poll rating was a massive leap forward for them. Most of the time they're chugging along at 3-4% along with the other smaller left parties. They even hit zero in one over the summer.

So I'd say any rep for any other party thinking of jumping ship to the SDs will wait and see if the Holly bounce is more than a 7-day wonder...

Fg are still pretty right wing economically. I'd say FF are similar. There's one difference. I've heard about how Micheal Martin is trying to get FF to move to the left and adopt new principles which would make it a proper centre left party but the TD's are resisting it.

All three would be left wing socially but with FF being the one most on the right, SF on the left and FG trying to play the middle ground and appeal to everyone.