The Irish people have spoken and managed to speak out of both sides of their mouths at the same time. A result that manages to be both more of the same and simultaneously a bigger mess. It is an election that no one truly won and many lost.

A Fianna Fail and Fine Gael government with the support of some independents seems the likeliest (if most unstable outcome). Alternatively, one of the smaller left parties could opt for ministerial cars and the almost certain electoral hammering next time out.

Fianna Fail and its leader Micheál Martin will try to act as if they have won, but the result remains amongst the worst in its history. Martin is the caretaker leader who never left. After the execution of the Celtic Tiger 1.0 by the global collapse and its bones chewed on by the Troika the vote of FF, the natural party of Irish government, collapsed. Martin stabilised it at the low 20s and it has remained stubbornly around there for over a decade.

Since that electoral crash, a core FF weakness has been in the greater Dublin area. Regrowth there is essential to any hope of greater predominance over Irish politics again but this election saw no change. For example, in Dublin Central in 2020 it came in fifth with over 10 per cent of the vote. In 2024 6th with just over 7 per cent. The salt in the wound is the Dublin gangland figure, Gerry ‘The Monk” Hutch, announced a last-minute bid and outpolled the FF candidate (though his vote mostly came from Sinn Fein’s past support).

A reason Martin has stayed leader is no alternative leader has emerged, especially in the Dublin area. This has not been a mere natural failing. Instead, it’s driven by a collaborative process of a FF headquarters cabal fearing what any new leadership would mean for them and their jobs, and an incumbent leader controlling appointments to ensure any medium or long-term threats are kept in check. Jack Chambers (Dublin West) is considered the preferred FF HQ/Martin successor but he has not made much of an impression as a minister. Others carry a candle for Jim O’Callaghan (Dublin South-East) but he could very well wilt in the limelight if he ever got it. But a party prudently providing itself with options for the future FF is not.

Fine Gael and Simon Harris have much to ponder. Some criticise the FG campaign for being presidential in style but with half his parliamentary party retiring there were limited alternatives. There are mutterings that he did a “Theresa May” but that is overly cruel. Polling saw a bounce of 4-6 per cent that disappeared during the campaign, rather than the record double-digit poll lead May managed to squander.

A better comparison is his namesake, Kamala Harris. When Vice-President Harris emerged as the Plan B Democratic candidate, there was a positive polling bump. Why? In a Biden vs. Trump face-off, the Donald was going to win but a significant section of voters was not happy that this was their choice. Her arrival looked like a break from it all and then she spent weeks showing it was not. So the election returned to its norm, a Trump victory. FG posters featured a photo of Harris with the slogan ‘A New Energy’ but the campaign came across as “A New Energy…for the same old agenda.”

Other than deserving an award for chutzpah, Sinn Fein’s performance was the worst

The media will say the “Kanturk incident” was the moment the balloon burst. It was a masterclass in how not to deal with an angry voter with the RTE News X post attracting 3.4 million views in 48 hours (the Irish republic has a population of 5.7m). The FG response was not much better. The following morning a person in a wheelchair was literally wheeled out in front of Harris for a photo opportunity, then various ill-defined “contacts” with the state broadcaster RTE to try and stop them using the footage. The full and proper mea culpa interview he should have done on Sunday morning was not really done until the day before the election.

 When there is video there is always a jump to the conclusion that this was the pivot point, but that would be a mistake. Polling showed the air leaking consistently from the Harris balloon throughout the campaign. It was more confirmation to a voter who had second thoughts about Harris that they were right. What he had destroyed was any chance to pump some air back in.

An early strength of Harris had been his hunger in comparison with his opponents, Martin and McDonald. He wanted it more. He was working 19 hours days since becoming Taoiseach. He took only 4 days, a long weekend, for his summer holiday. The Kanturk incident seemed to show not a hungry leader but a manic one.

He partly bounced the FG parliamentary party into making him leader, but his leadership is likely safe in the short-term. Half the parliamentary party being new should help and a change in leader closer to the next election makes more sense.

With the two main parties of government effectively treading electoral water, the main opposition party should have made significant advances. Other than deserving an award for chutzpah and spin, Sinn Fein’s performance was the worst of the three big Irish parties.

The exit poll predicted SF first (21.1 per cent), FG second (21.0) and FF third (19.5). SF spin went into over-drive with whispers to the political journalists that they would do better than the exit poll. This ensured positive coverage during the first day of the count and even as the votes were tallied the journalists in the count centres and studios did not seem to notice a complicating fact. It was not true. The exit poll was wrong.

In fact, FF came first (21.9 per cent), FG second with (20.8 per cent) and SF third with (19.0 per cent). In the summer of 2023 SF was polling 36 per cent. Mary Lou McDonald declared SF’s result had broken the mould of Irish politics. In truth, there has been no mould to Irish politics since the crash. The only mould they broke was their own.  They transformed from an effective and popular party of opposition into an electoral mini-me to the old Treaty parties in just 18 short months.

In 2020 Sinn Fein were top of the popular vote. In 2024 they came third. In 2020 they gained 24.5 per cent of the votes. In 2024 a quarter of Irish voters had declined to them getting less that one in five. From 2020 to 2024 the three government parties’ (FF, FG and Greens) vote share dropped by a combined 4.5 per cent (almost all the Greens) while SF alone dropped even more, 5.5 per cent (so a loss of 22 per cent of their 2024 voters).  The top issue for voters was housing, which Sinn Fein was trusted more on than FF or FG but could not turn this polled confidence into actual votes.

The mythological SF election ‘machine’ has been vanquished. In this poll (and the local and European elections earlier this year) voters reported being canvassed by FF and FG at twice the rate of SF. This was structural failure by SF at almost all levels.

The only thing they will have left to spin is the number of seats. They may come back with a few more. Why? The Dail increased from 160 to 174 seats. In 2020 many SF candidates were elected over quota so their vote could take a hit with no drop in seats.

This leaves Sinn Fein with its Mary Lou problem. She performed well throughout the campaign and overall eked a few percentage points back from their polling low point of 16 per cent. Research shows she has an appeal beyond the party but after multiple attempts she has not made the breakthrough. She was the leader when the opportunity to make one slipped through their hands. Though how much blame can, in fairness, be placed on someone who’s more front woman than truly leader is hard for any democratic, constitutional outsider to gauge. However, her departure could mean SF join FF in having a Greater Dublin problem, especially as her likeliest replacement is Pearse Doherty from Donegal (the role of place is a much greater factor in Irish politics).

This collection of dysfunction across the three main parties points to a deeper malaise within the Irish political system and state. In 2020 FF, FG, and SF attracted 67 per cent of the vote. In 2024 they attracted 62 per cent. Four years of government that neither the government parties nor the main opposition benefitted from is a festival of losing. It also marked the lowest turnout in an Irish general election in history at 59.7 per cent. This is a disenchanted republic.

No problems have been solved with this election, but plenty of weaknesses have been demonstrated

Yet how did FF and FG avoid the fate of most other western incumbent parties? Politically, it was encapsulated by former FF Special Adviser Derek Mooney when he described there being “plenty of opposition to the government but no alternative”. Its own particular set of dysfunctions maintained the status quo and bucked the trend.

In terms of the social-economic situation it was summed up in a radio presenter’s question to Micheál Martin, ‘If Ireland is so rich, why do so many feel as if they live in a poor country?’ The core division remains between FDI Ireland and non-FDI Ireland – GDP Ireland and GNI Ireland – The Global Accountants’ Ireland vs. Reality Ireland.

Its political symptom is home ownership, and the one policy change FF and FG could do to move the needle would be to go all in on solving housing, but they seem incapable of anything more than the half-hearted. With no real differences between the two could they just admit that and merge? It remains very unlikely, not least because there’s no credible polling evidence that one merged party would be greater than the two in competition.

The Labour Party and Social Democrats could get over their personalities and histories to create a new left party, perhaps even absorb the remains of the Greens. This could start to challenge SF for the mantle of opposition.

However, Non-FDI Ireland’s electoral strength is fundamentally weakened by dissipation across a range of small parties and independents. Could an Irish Farage emerge to mould them into a credible political force? Again, this is unlikely. The independents are ungovernable and incapable of coalescing round anything. Furthermore, serious party funding is more the preserve of FDI Ireland.

What about external shock? Could the geo-political hand grenade that is Donald Trump upend the delicate political order in Ireland?

A radical Corporation Tax policy could create chaos for the Irish economic model. In a trade war with the European Union Ireland is the most vulnerable with a tenth of Irish exports going to the US (mostly pharmaceuticals, though a 10 per cent Trump tariff would probably still be too low to make them unviable). Notably, this potential catastrophe barely featured in the public discourse of the election. The Irish political and business elite have their fingers crossed with the Celtic Tiger 2.0 as much as they did with the 1.0 version.  Their future fortunes may well depend on how much  Trump will be Trump.

What does this all mean for Northern Ireland? Sinn Fein’s plan of being in power in Dublin and Belfast, to drive and deliver a mythical 2030 referendum on somehow detaching Ulster from the rest of the UK, has run headlong into an electoral wall. In further insult, the exit polling showed that abolishing Northern Ireland and trying to absorb 1.9m people into the Irish state did not feature as a voter priority in the Republic.

The election sets out how much Ireland has its set of political, social and economic dysfunctions to work through (as so do all western states). Northern Ireland (and the broader UK) has its own collection and lacklustre approaches. An amalgamation of dysfunctions will not solve any for either state. And Sinn Fein’s supposed USP is neither a political prospect nor a real priority, no matter how much time is wasted on referendum cosplay. No problems have been solved with this election, but plenty of weaknesses have been once again demonstrated.