Fine Gael’s promises begin to add up a week into election campaign

Good morning and welcome to the Inside Politics election digest. Tomorrow it will be a week since Simon Harris beetled up to Áras an Uachtaráin to call the long-awaited general election. Seem like longer? As Jennifer Bray and Jack Horgan-Jones discussed with Hugh Linehan on the Election Daily podcast yesterday evening, there is a scattered, diffused feeling to the campaign so far – with nine parties, plus Independents, plus micro (as opposed to merely small) parties, it’s hard to focus on a single campaign debate or dynamic. There’s a whole bunch of things happening all the time.
That may change as the campaign grinds on, and debate tends to focus around a small number of key issues and questions. This morning we reported that the divide between Opposition parties and Fine Gael/Fianna Fáil on the issue of a rent freeze sharpened yesterday.
There are clear divides now between Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael on the one side and most of the Opposition on the other on a rent freeze and on the Help-to-Buy scheme.
Sure, everyone has their own housing policy. But these are among the big choices that will face the voters when they go to the ballot box.
Last night, in an interview with Colette Fitzpatrick on Virgin Media, Taoiseach Simon Harris announced another policy departure – if re-elected to government, he said, he would abolish the means test for the carers’ allowance.
We can expect that the details will be fleshed out by Fine Gael today, but the costs for this move will be significant. Earlier this year, officials in the Department of Social Protection estimated that the cost would be an additional €600 million per annum, based on current claim numbers. That is, in other words, before adding any new inflow of claims.
But removing the means test could cause an influx of new claims, officials believe. The department has costed a potential inflow of people who self-reported as carers in the census. Once the inflow is considered, the cost estimates rise to between €880 million and €2 billion a year, they said. Hardly an insignificant amount of money.
Along with other promises made by Fine Gael – yesterday also saw an €860 million childcare plan, the day before it was the end of university fees – the costs of all this are mounting up.
Foreign policy made an entry to the election debate yesterday when People Before Profit declared that they will “defend Ireland’s neutrality” by withdrawing from EU military co-operation and from Nato’s Partnership for Peace and “call for peace talks” in Ukraine rather than supporting “EU efforts to intensify war”.
Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael have been “chipping away at Ireland’s neutrality” for many years, TD Richard Boyd Barrett said, most obviously through facilitating the transit of US troops through Shannon Airport.
Asked if by opposing EU support for Ukraine, he was essentially advocating that Ukraine should trade territory for peace with Russia, Boyd Barrett compared the situation with British sovereignty over Northern Ireland.
“Most people in this country in nearly every political party have an aspiration for a united Ireland, but we’ve all concluded that won’t be achieved through military means. So the fact that we don’t pursue a united Ireland through military means doesn’t mean we’re not in favour of a united Ireland,” he said.
Not sure what they’d make of the comparison in Kyiv.
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Taoiseach Simon Harris and Minister Paschal Donohoe speak to the media on Dublin’s Capel Street this morning. Later Harris’s battle bus (“It’s a minibus,” sneers one rival) will be in Dublin North-West, Dublin Central and Dublin Bay North.
Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly and Dublin Fingal West general election candidate Lorraine Clifford-Lee will outline details of Fianna Fáil’s policy for affordability and accessibility in healthcare at the party’s morning briefing, while Micheál Martin will be in Offaly – Edenderry, Birr and Tullamore – and later in Limerick city.
Minister Roderic O’Gorman, Deputy Brian Leddin and Cllr Hazel Chu will be upstairs in the Temple Bar Arts Gallery this morning to discuss the Green Party’s climate proposals.
Aontú is holding an election event focusing on agriculture and rural Ireland in Meath.
The Social Democrats will launch their climate and nature policy on Sandymount Strand (hope they get the weather … )
Oxfam Ireland and the National Women’s Council will host a general election debate at the National University of Ireland on Merrion Square. Speakers include Jim O’Callaghan (FF); Darren O’Rourke (SF); Neasa Hourigan (Greens); Bríd Smith (PBP); Sinéad Gibney (Soc Dems).
Fórsa, Ireland’s largest public service trade union, will launch the union’s general election manifesto at its head office on Nerney’s Court in Dublin 1.
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The Indo showcases its interview with Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin. He complains that “Fine Gael seem to be strategically deciding to target Fianna Fáil – more than targeting Sinn Féin.”
The Examiner has an interview with Social Democrats leader and Cork South-West TD Holly Cairns, who says she was “shocked” by the amount of lobbying that goes on in Leinster House.
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