The decline of FG?

 and handed over his council seat to his wife

Bit of memory loss with that blanch?

Far as my research can see, 2 years after Paul Donnelly was elected to the Dáil, Angela Donnelly was co-opted to replace Aaron O'Rourke in a series of co-options that saw the Greens, Labour and the Soc Dems do the same.

I don't think there is a leasehold aspect to the SF plan and we already have the "seperate private market" in the affordable housing scheme. For clarity the scheme allows lower income families buy houses at more affordable prices so it ends up costing the owners much less in the long run than had they bought at market prices.

Generally speaking lower prices winds up costing less in the long run for the property owners, not sure how you'd think otherwise

In what way will they not work?

Every party uses the co-option process.
The exceptionalism that led you to misrepresent your local situation clouding your view.

Again for the record, it was Varadkar in opposition who promised to do something about this:

"For too long cronyism has been at the heart of appointments to State bodies.

He said: “One needs only look at some of the plum appointments over the last number of years to see a wealth of unqualified candidates appointed to State boards and public bodies.”

Ironic that his government nearly came unstuck because of a crony appointment.

BTW had Donnelly done as you claimed, it would have been wrong and rightly open to criticism.

That you had to gild the lily shows how inconsistent and exceptionalist you are though.

I don't know anything much about Major.
I am judging FG leadership on a FG thread.
Varadkar failed to increase FG electoral support and threw in the towel mid term.
Harris IMO has the potential to fail better than him primarily because he is a show pony and is presiding over ( successfully for now) runaway finances as they buy votes, a housing crisis that is stubbornly remaining and has managed to divert blame for the mess that immigration has become.

They did, but far far worse than GE2020.

I call it nonsense. When Lynn Boylan was asked on NT yesterday if they had engaged the banks to see if they would even give mortgages for this type of property, she diverted and refused to answer the question.

Typical SF bluster as usual. Nonsense, uncosted, socialist bluster.

Oh and they (SF) want to cancel the help to buy scheme too. This is why there is a decline in SF, not FG, and the electorate are set to return the current government again.

FG are on the verge of being in power for a record-breaking 4th Term.

Only Dev has done that before.

Meanwhile, SF has blown a 15% poll lead to end up being 3rd in a 2-horse race, without ever sniffing at power.

Without a doubt one of the biggest fuckups in Irish Political history.

The reason Local Elections are different to GE's is eloquently stated by the poster who wrote this - guess who wrote this when it suited him to write it?

I am happy to vote for councillors in local elections who have a good record on issues like that. However, when voting for general elections, we are voting for legislators and Ministers, that is a completely different skillset.

EU elections, Local elections and GE's are different entities as you eloquently outlined above.
FG's vote declined in the latest Local Election.
Quite simply we won't know if their vote has declined until an actual GE.

And still remain well below the level they were at when MLMD took over the leadership.

15.2% of the vote in 2014 in Adams' last locals; down to 9.5% in 2019 and 11.8% in 2024 under MLMD

Compared to LE2019 FF down 3% to 31 seats (29% to 27%), SF up 21 or about 2.2%

If that same swing gets replicated between GE2020 and GE2024 FFG would lose 7 seats while SF would gain 4. However you need to remember there will be 14 more seats available and all 12 green seats would probably be up for grabs so if SF play their cards right they will take power

SF and FF are too different, an agreement between them would be akin to a coalition between the Tories and the (British) Labour. Not saying it's impossible but it's highly unlikely.

All in all it depends on what way the electorate vote in the next GE. Mathematically if the left wing parties get 88 seats and SF is the largest left party they won't need any help from the civil war parties

Keep believing all that SF spin if you wish. However, the trends are clear - FG has stopped the decline and is on the way back up.

The issue with the National Maternity Hospital was that SF complained that the owners of the land could influence the owners of the property which was built on the land, and could restrict the owners of the property from doing certain things because of this and the things that they could restrict stretched far far beyond the property itself (like not just the building, rooms, renovations etc) but into what the people in the property could do.

If SF were right on the National Maternity Hospital, it would mean that the government, as the owners of the land could restrict the owners of the SF houses from watching any TV other than TG4 and listening to any music other than the Wolfe Tones, in accordance with SF ideology.