Léargas

By the time you read this column/blog the election will be all but over bar the most important bit – the peoples vote on Friday. Today it’s over to the electorate in the 26 counties to decide which parties will make up the next government in Dublin. We will know their decision at the weekend. For readers in the north it will come as no surprise that the entirely negative and partitionist attitude of the Irish establishment toward the people of this part of the island disappointingly emerged frequently in recent weeks. First, it was an opinion piece in the Sunday Independent two weeks ago from the Labour leader Joan Burton in which she unsurprisingly took 600 words to reveal her deeply partitionist, ‘little Irelander’ side. According to Joan, and because I come from the north, I don’t understand ‘the Republic’. I suspect the elections results will show that she understands it even less. More disturbing was a studio discussion I had with Meath Fine Gael TD Regina Doherty whose a

On Sunday February 14 th the Sunday Independent carried an article from Labour Leader Joan Burton in which she claimed that I didn’t understand this state. I wrote a response. The Sunday Independent refused to carry it yesterday. So, for those who are interested in what I said this is the response the Independent refused to publish. Hope over fear by Gerry Adams TD I was disappointed but not surprised by Joan Burton’s opinion piece in last week’s Sunday Independent, which highlighted a deeply partitionist, ‘little Irelander’ attitude on the part of the Tánaiste. Despite what Joan Burton claims I never used the phrase ‘'them others' during last week’s TV3 Leaders Debate or at any other time for that matter. However, she is correct when she says that I differentiate Sinn Féin from the establishment parties of Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil and Labour. She is also correct in stating that those parties have a shared history and experience in Government. But it is not a

This column comes to you from Dublin, via Kilkenny, via Clonmel, via Cork City, Tipperary and before that Limerick and Birr. It was the second week of the election bus. It has put in some miles and so have we. And some of those miles have been on rocky and bumpy and twisty roads. There have been a few green faces among the backroom team especially when their laptops take flight.   Their stomachs sometimes follow. Especially RG’s. I have lost track of what election ‘Day’ this is. Is it Day 15 or Day 16 or Day 17? Of course, the ‘Day’ that really matters is Friday week, February 26 th . That’s the peoples’ day. That’s when citizens in the 26 counties can shape the direction of this state, and of this island, for the next five years.    It’s been a busy time since the Taoiseach finally brought an end to the phoney electoral contest and set the election date. I suspect he’s now rueing the decision not to call the election last November when the polls where kinder to Fine Gael. T

In the general election in the south which is now entering its second week Sinn Féin is standing 50 candidates in all 40 constituencies. It is a great honour to represent Sinn Féin in any capacity and a huge privilege to seek a mandate from your peers for our historic republican mission. Of course not every Sinn Féin candidate will get elected. That is the nature of elections but every Sinn Féin candidate has the ability to get elected. Opinion polls have become an integral part of every election campaign. Every newspaper and every broadcast outlet tries to second guess the electorate by commissioning polls. And then their columnists or pundits spend a huge amount of time analysing the poll they just commissioned. If the pollsters and the pundits had their way you could just do without the election and let them decide what the people want. We should not get carried away by opinion polls. Last week one poll had Sinn Féin down a point while another had us up a point and i

The starting pistol has been fired; the referee has blown his whistle; the starting gates have been thrown open; and we are off the blocks. And at the end of all those sporting metaphors I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you that we are now in the midst of the general election. There has been a sort of phoney election campaign going on for months. All of the parties have been writing their manifestos and polishing off their policy documents. In the last three weeks anyone who follows me on twitter will know that I have been travelling across the south for the campaign launches of Sinn Féin candidates. From Meath to Wicklow and Wexford, to Dublin, Cork and Galway. In Louth Imelda Munster and I had a great campaign launch. We are hoping to take two of the five seats. It’s a big ask but doable. The mood among activists is expectant and positive. There is a widely held view that the party will do better this time than we did in 2011 when we won fourteen seats in the Dáil a