Politics of the impossible
Everyone's angry at the government and everyone wants something different
ALL IRELAND WHINGERS COLUMN
THE government has a curious problem as Budget week approaches: the people who say the economy is going well are the ones angriest with it.
Business owners polled by S&W are bullish on growth and piling money into artificial intelligence, yet 56% now say the government is anti-business - up from 36% a year ago. That's despite 77% backing its economic strategy.
On the farm, the mood is worse.
In the latest Irish Farmers Journal reader survey, Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil have lost their majority among farmers for the first time and now hold 49% between them.
Independent Ireland has doubled to 20% and overtaken Fianna Fáil into third. It's a reader survey rather than a poll, but the shift is the most dramatic in two decades of the Journal's surveys.
Farmers are worried about costs, and they have every right to be. The government knows a repeat of April's fuel protests is the last thing it needs.
It recalled the Dáil in August to extend the excise supports, and with forecourt prices above €2.10 a litre, the levers look thin. Kerosene is up 59%, and many rural households face a winter of choosing between heating and eating.
Business wants something different. S&W's respondents want CGT cut to 20% and personal tax reform, and groups like IBEC and Chambers Ireland have long argued that housing and infrastructure shortages hold back growth and foreign investment.
Ireland needs homes, Dublin needs its Metro and Galway its ring road, but that leaves little for households living pay cheque to pay cheque.
So where does that leave the two big parties? You'd assume Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael had both farmers and business tied up, but the numbers say otherwise.
Jack Chambers, with colleagues jokingly referring to him as ‘Jack Thatcher’, holds the purse strings on €7bn of new spending, while Simon Harris controls the €1.5bn tax package where business's asks sit.
Neither can please everyone, and as with any budget there will be winners and losers. If business gets the bulk of what it wants and keeps thriving, it will likely stick with the status quo at the ballot box. Farmers look less certain to.
They are the forgotten few, even in a county like Mayo where the farm vote always ruled.
Aontú's Paul Lawless won a Dáil seat in 2024 after clinching a spot on the council from a bellwether part of the county, and the fuel anger has played straight into his hands.
The Claremorris area also gave Independent Ireland's Mark Devane a strong first outing in 2024, and that's with the geography against him. He's from Ballindine, on the far edge of the electoral area, and still polled 676 first preferences. That's one vote fewer than Lawless managed in his first run in 2019, and Lawless now sits in the Dáil.
With Westport's Chris Maxwell already on the council, Independent Ireland will see Claremorris as ripe for a second seat.
It's equally striking how little Sinn Féin registered there.
They ran Eamon Phelan, a party worker from outside the area, whose name on the ballot was there to cover the whole Mayo constituency, in the same area that backed the man who would become Aontú's second-ever TD and show an appetite for Independent Ireland too.
Interestingly, it’s Fine Gael who are showing signs of hurt in Claremorris and with the behemoth vote of Patsy O’Brien likely to grow even further, their hopes of ever re-claiming Tom Connolly’s seat will be rocked.
With many long-term councillors sitting in the area, the retirement of one could see votes spread erratically if succession isn’t planned well.
Castlebar may see signs of a shift too. Independent Ireland has been growing nationally on the back of Fianna Fáil defections, and rural Fianna Fáil is the vote it's eating into.
Blackie Gavin says he remains a Fianna Fáil man and will back the party to the hilt, but he has also said he'd run as an independent if not selected.
His name would be a boon to any Independent Ireland ticket. Though a general election is a tougher proposition.
The anti-establishment lane is already occupied by Lawless and he’s ready to articulate rural disgruntlement and has the south and east of the county covered, while Rose Conway-Walsh holds the opposition ground in the north and west.
Only a Castlebar-based candidate could realistically break through for Independent Ireland or for a traditional independent at a general election.
Watch this space.