The first leaders’ debate of Ireland’s current election campaign featured no fewer than ten party leaders. While this format was perhaps a questionable editorial choice, it was also simply a reflection of the now very diffuse – and quite messy – character of Ireland’s political system.
After the last general election in 2020, the 160 seats in Dáil Éireann (the lower house of the Irish parliament) were divided across eight different parties and no fewer than 19 independents. No single party won more than a quarter of the seats.
Calling this a “hung parliament” would probably be an understatement. It took almost four and a half months after the election for a governing coalition to be formed. Since 2020, the number of parties with representation in the Dáil has increased to ten.
This very fractured political landscape – in a small state with no regional or separatist parties – is down to two peculiar factors.
The first reason is that Ireland has a very unusual voting system of proportional representation by single transferable vote, which makes it easier for smaller parties to win seats.
Along with a multiple-preference ballot paper, this system also requires multiseat constituencies – which is what really makes it “proportionate”. All constituencies have three, four or five seats, which are filled by transferring votes from the second and subsequent preferences of eliminated candidates and the “surplus” votes of elected candidates.
This makes it relatively easier for smaller parties to pick up seats, because they do not have to win a constituency to get a seat in it. A party with say, 5% of the national vote share has a reasonable chance of getting around 5% of the seats.
If replicated in the UK, this would immensely boost smaller parties like the Liberal Democrats, the Green party or Reform. And instead of giving Keir Starmer’s Labour a landslide on 34% of the vote, it would probably have forced it into a multiparty coalition.
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The second reason for Ireland’s fractured politics is what might be described as the slow-burn collapse of the party system itself, and the diffusion of the vote across a wider range of smaller parties and independents.
For around a half-century between the 1930s and 1980s, the Irish party system was remarkably stable. Power typically alternated between the largest party, Fianna Fáil, and its rival Fine Gael, in coalition with the smaller Labour party. One or the other was almost invariably able to form a ruling majority in the Dáil.
This began to change slowly from the 1980s, with the success of smaller parties of left and right, including the Workers Party, the Democratic Left and the Progressive Democrats, eating into the combined vote share of the longer-established parties.
But this trend accelerated in the first election following the financial crisis of 2008, when the vote share of the once-dominant Fianna Fáil collapsed from 42% in 2007 to just 17% in 2011. Fine Gael never really took over as the default party of government. And while Fianna Fáil itself partly recovered, it has reached nothing like its former popularity.
Consequently, in the last two general elections, no single party has won much more than a quarter of the first-preference vote (with Fine Gael achieving 25.5% in 2016).
This pattern looks set to be replicated on November 29. Both Sinn Féin – which surged to the largest vote share in 2020 – along with Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, who have been governing in coalition with the Greens, have all hovered in or around one fifth to one quarter of the vote share in most recent opinion polls, with Fine Gael most recently suffering a sudden dip to 19%.
This is almost certain to be the third general election in a row in which no single party emerges as a clear “winner”.
A “fractured” party system is not intrinsically a bad thing. Once formed, coalition governments in Ireland have proven remarkably stable, due in part to the unusually disciplined character of parties and the strength of the party whip. But it has nonetheless thrown up some practical problems.
In particular, it led to protracted stalemates in the aftermath of the last two general elections, when no government could be formed for record-breaking periods of three and a half months and four and a half months, respectively.
These stalemates have meant relatively long periods of “caretaker” government. Under the Irish constitution, the outgoing taoiseach and ministers must formally resign if they cannot maintain the support of the Dáil after an election. But they must nonetheless “carry on their duties until their successors … have been appointed”.
This period of interregnum – the hiatus between governments – poses a lot of difficulties. The constitution sets no limit on how long a caretaker government can continue – although Ireland seems unlikely ever to reach Belgium’s record of 652 days. And whether a caretaker government enjoys the full powers of normal government – or is confined to routine duties – is unclear.
The constitution referring to “duties” rather than “powers” arguably excludes major decisions like signing international treaties. Moreover, caretaker governments have no democratic mandate. And yet, events might dictate that big decisions be taken. It was, after all, a caretaker government which, amid the onset of COVID, enacted what were perhaps the most sweeping and consequential measures in the history of the state.
In 2020, however, a court ruled that Ireland’s senate effectively cannot function and pass legislation during a caretaker government. This is because 11 of its 60 members must first be nominated by the newly appointed taoiseach following a general election. This throws the long-term functionality of caretaker governments into serious doubt, and arguably places urgency behind the now torturous process of government formation.
Whatever the outcome of the November 29 general election, it seems Ireland’s political landscape will remain a strange blend of continuity and flux. Underlying a facade of relative stability, there has been a longer-term trend towards discord and disintegration, familiar across much of the European continent.
Eoin Daly does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
