The Worst Opposition In Dáil History

Fair play to them for being so incompetent.

I will not bore you to tears with a history of opposition parties since the state's founding. I’ll leave that to more learned academics than I, not that this author can claim to be learned or academic. But I do have some observations about the current state of the opposition in the 34th Dáil.

The opposition of the 34th Dáil is made of Sinn Féin, Social Democrats, The Labour Party, Independents Ireland, People Before Profit, and a smattering of other irrelevant egos.

Ireland has a lot of problems right now. We’re knee-deep in a massive housing and infrastructure crisis. It’s quite obvious now the previous government over-promised and under-achieved on housing targets. Some unkind political commentators might claim the Government lied during the general election campaign, but it’d be hard to argue that it would have been an unfair observation. So what does the opposition do? They pick a fight about obscure orders of business (speaking rights) in the Dáil. When they could have hung, drawn and quartered the previous housing minister, Darragh O'Brien and by extension the government. Your average Irish voter would have been on board there. But the opposition picked a fight over something that has fuck all effect on how people live their lives. That’s piss poor strategy, which might actually be an insight into the level of intelligence on the opposition benches.

There’s a story, possibly apocryphal doing the rounds, regarding a young child trying to build a sandcastle on Dollymount Strand in Dublin recently. Before she had finished said castle built on sand and conditions vulnerable to Dublin’s obvious coastal tides, she was surrounded by legal types brandishing objections from concerned citizens in West Cork who were worried her sandcastle would obscure their views of the Poolbeg towers. It’s only a matter of time before relationships that have been built on decades of honesty, trust and mutual affection are subject to judicial review because your neighbours don’t believe you love your spouse that much. But the opposition picked a fight over Parliamentary speaking rights, something very few people care or understand about.

Yes of course the regional independents are having their cake and eating it. You can’t be voting with the government and opposing them in the same breath. There’s a word for that. That’ll be their albatross at the next general election. But calling a motion of no confidence in the Ceann Comhairle will have no tangible outcome at the next general election. That’s an opposition devoid of serious intellects and political strategists. The government of the 34th Dáil is weak because of the inertia that currently grips the country in relation to the housing crisis but the opposition goes after someone who has no say on the matter and never will. The powers that be in Government must be smiling inwardly at the opposition’s lack of ability to land a killer blow.

Thanks to the looming spectre of Trump’s trade tariffs, Ireland is about to get a masterclass in how tariffs screw up a small, open economy. Taoiseach, Micheál Martin, a man not normally given to apocalyptic pronouncements, has declared these new US tariffs a “very grave and serious threat.” Translation: We’re screwed, lads. A joint report from Ireland’s Department of Finance and the ESRI think tank puts the potential damage at €18 billion in lost trade. That’s enough money to buy every man, woman, and child in Ireland a lifetime supply of Tayto and Guinness. But ya, speaking rights for politicians no one has ever heard of. That’ll win votes. Will it fuck.

Tariffs don’t just hurt big corporations or the GDP of countries. They’re like a financial hand grenade—when they go off, the shrapnel hits everyone. The factory worker in Limerick, the sandwich or coffee shop owners near the retail parks that litter the outer rings of suburban areas of Ireland, the taxi drivers ferrying multinational executives to Dublin and Cork Airports—all collateral damage in Trump’s latest bout of economic self-sabotage. What about those speaking rights for some barely literate drooling imbeciles, masquerading as parliamentarians, who have been jumping up and down like extras from a Planet of the Apes movie over 8 minutes of speaking rights? No one will care about your 8 minutes of speaking rights if they can’t put food on the table.

The opposition in recent weeks had the opportunity to inflict serious damage on the government in health, infrastructure, and housing, take your pick. But they chose to die on a hill for 8 minutes of speaking rights with more than a whiff of misogyny against the speaker of the house. If they’re this incompetent in opposition, imagine how incompetent they will be in government.