If Sinn Fein leader Mary Lou McDonald can turn the Irish nationalist party’s opinion poll lead into a historic election breakthrough this week, it will be healthcare and housing not their signature demand for a united Ireland that will have put them on the brink of power.
Under new leader McDonald, a 50-year-old Dubliner with no link to the Northern Ireland conflict, the party has focused on inequality created by a five-year economic boom to win voters who shunned the party in the past.
Opinion polls on Monday (February 3) showed party for the first time in front of the country’s centre-right duopoly of Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil- which have taken turns in power for a century – a political earthquake for the country of 4.8 million.
Successive surveys suggest that more than any other party, Sinn Fein has tapped into discontent over an uneven economic boom, particularly on the defining issue of housing where sky high rents and a scarcity of affordable homes has angered large swathes of the electorate.