Sinn Fein and how do they form a government dilemma

Well they certainly confounded those predicting LE levels of support.
FG FF and almost any party that survives in Irish politics have recovered support from falls, even the Greens , who are having to become experts at it or die out like the PDs, Renua etc.

Against that though

More people voted in 2024 than 2020

The 2 main government parties got more votes than in 2020 out of that

SF lost more votes on a bigger voter number than the entire population of cork city

Hardly a stat to ignore after 13 yrs of Fine Gael in government and 9 of defacto FFG government

What is being ignored exactly?

SF's vote declined over one election cycle, the previous one being a high water mark for the party.
They also recorded a very good campaign which was gaining momentum which gives a very obvious lie to the tired leader/tired front bench serial curmudgeons.

Many parties have lost similar ground, some to the point of extinction previously in history (one government party in this election cycle). Many have recovered support, some several times.

I did ask in the run up to the election here,was there ever an opposition party losing as much popularity as SF ?

That Cork city size loss in vote only saw your T.D numbers rise because there were more to be got plus you were able to gain from running more candidates

The extra candidates should have added 3 or 4 times the extra seats if the population of Cork city hadn’t moved away

All I’m saying is,there’s a bigger hill to climb from 24 to 29 than there was from 20 to 24 and that hill isn’t of the government’s making

😁 I thought there would be a qualifier. Perish the thought credit could be given.

The election would also support this theory:

FG FF would need to come up with some coherent policies to gain support from outside the people they currently have supporting them.

They lost voteshare in actuality.

Something something you can read things as you like in a close fought election such as we had.

Your exceptionalist take doesn't really work in comparison to the other parties.

No. This is as much a statement of 'fact' as the one you made:

FG FF would need to come up with some coherent policies to gain support from outside the people they currently have supporting them

You claimed what I posted was gibberish. Don't do that when you cannot dispute what was posted?

Over 200,000 less votes in a bigger poll is not great,it’s a concerning performance after nearly 5 years of being the chief opposition party and effectively 10 years

I’m not sure how you grow after that,other than hope the centre ground,the majority of the electorate suffer in the pocket

65% replied no to that question in the RTE exit poll regarding the previous 5 years

Answering yes to being worse off now than 4 years ago is what swung it for Trump across the pond

Why do inveterate critics of a political party think their advice (what they need to do…etc) has any weight?

We have heard the ‘she’ll be gone within the week’ predictions for months now and yet she led a great campaign for SF and almost drew with MM as choice of Taoiseach in the exit poll with Harris finishing a poor 3rd, same result in the debate.
Doherty got the highest personal vote in the country and O’Broin had no issues either.

Nobody in SF is listening nor should listen to advice to get rid of their best performers.

They lost 22.5% of their vote.

Losing 100k first preference votes since the last election is fhe exact opposite of growing your vote.