Ireland's Growing Democratic Deficit

(or ‘How to stay in power in Ireland without winning elections’)

Is Fine Gael one of 21^st century Europe’s most successful political parties?

Based on the length of time they’ve been in continuous power in Ireland it would appear so.

Consider for one moment that the one-time conservative centre-right party which took power at the height of Ireland’s economic crash in 2011 has now been in power continuously for 15 years. Indeed, barring some unforeseen mishap, all the signs are that Fine Gael look set to stay in office until 2029 which would make it an unprecedented 18 years in continuous power.

That’s quite an achievement in the modern era when an increasingly fickle electorate has shown itself to demonstrate little loyalty to political parties or their leaders.

Indeed, Fine Gael’s extended stay in power looks set to even beat the epoch-making era involving a Fianna Fáil led by Éamon de Valera. That started in 1932 and continued until 1948 giving a continuous 16 years of Fianna Fáil government. Commentators in Ireland are still talking about that.

However, even de Valera’s record is put in the shade by the modern-day Fine Gael. To achieve an unbroken spell of close on two decades in power, you would imagine that a political party would need to enjoy overwhelming popular electoral support.

Like it or not, that was the case with Fianna Fáil in the 1930’s and 40’s. De Valera’s Fianna Fáil won decisive electoral victories in general elections in 1933, 1937, 1938, 1943 and 1944. In these five general elections, the Fianna Fáil vote share ranged from a low of 41.9% to a high of 51.9%. These votes were recorded in robust electoral contests with a minimum voter turnout of 70%.  

By contrast, Fine Gael’s electoral performances over the last 15 years have been unimpressive to say the least. While the party led by Enda Kenny swept to power in 2011 with an impressive 36.1% share of the vote all subsequent general elections since then have seen its vote share slump. However, in spite of these electoral setbacks Fine Gael have remained in power.

Enda Kenny: leader Fine Gael 2002-2017 Copyright Alamy

For example, in the 2016 general election the Fine Gael vote fell by 10% to 25.5%. Neither did the leadership of Leo Varadkar, Fine Gael’s poster boy for a new liberal Ireland, succeed in reversing the party’s electoral fortunes. In the 2020 general election, under his leadership, the Fine Gael vote share actually fell by a further 5% to 20.9%.

The 2024 general election didn’t bring any better news for the party in spite of the trumpeting of newly elected leader Simon Harris as ‘a new energy’. In the 2024 general election, Fine Gael managed to get just 20.8% of the popular vote. This was only marginally better than Fine Gael’s lowest ever recorded vote share of 20.4% in the 1944 and 1948 general elections when the party was in the political wilderness.

Fine Gael’s electoral woes continued in the most recent electoral contest – namely, Ireland’s Presidential election of October 2025. Even though leader Simon Harris ordered Fine Gael councillors around the country not to back any other candidates thereby effectively blocking independent opposition candidates from even getting on the ballot, the party still finished second in a two-horse race to independent and left-leaning candidate Catherine Connolly. That came after the withdrawal of the Fianna Fáil candidate, their main electoral rival, from the contest.

The standout result of that Presidential election was that 13% of voters spoiled their votes in what was Ireland’s – and one of Europe’s – largest such protest votes. In most democracies, a protest vote on that scale would probably be enough to trigger the collapse of a government. Not so in Fine Gael’s Ireland – after the obligatory ‘lessons will be learned’ noises, it appears to be a case of business as usual again.

In light of a succession of such electoral disasters, the real question is how the Fine Gael party has defied the democratic will of the Irish people and managed to cling on to power over the last 15 years?

Leo Varadkar (centre) leader Fine Gael 2017-2024, Simon Harris (right) leader Fine Gael 2024-present Copyright Alamy

The key to that surely has been the party’s championing of an electoral model which puts politicians and political parties – not the electorate – in the driving seat when it comes to government formation. In this way, parties like Fine Gael, even when they fail to receive anything resembling an electoral mandate, have managed to stay in power by cobbling together ad-hoc post-election coalition deals.

The fact that such deals happen after the election effectively blindsides the electorate. Equally, the negotiated policy programmes for such coalitions usually owe more to the efforts of party backroom teams to keep their political bosses in power than they do to reflecting the democratic will of the people.

No one is suggesting that coalition governments per se are not a valid political option especially under the PR system of voting. This is especially so when coalition options and their associated programmes for government are clearly flagged before an election thus giving the electorate oversight over such deals.

But that is not what has been happening in Ireland over the last 15 years. Fine Gael (and their former political opponents Fianna Fáil) have been fighting general elections as standalone political parties and only then negotiating sweet heart coalition deals. The fact that Fine Gael has had control over the Finance portfolio since 2011 has only served to strengthen its hand when it comes to negotiating such deals.

Fine Gael stormed to power in 2011 on a promise of rescuing the state’s finances, tackling public waste and generally building a smaller, more efficient state. It was a no-nonsense promise of fundamental reform which drew heavily on the party’s conservative roots. Fifteen years later, Ireland is indeed a different place but hardly the one promised by Fine Gael back in 2011.

For starters, Fine Gael has overseen the ballooning of public spending. Between 2016 and 2026, public spending increased by 113% going from €55bn to €118bn per annum. Few people believe that this massive increase in public spending has resulted in better services.

The systemic failures evident in housing and health have hardly been helped by Fine Gael’s policy of artificially boosting demand through inward migration. Since Fine Gael took power in 2011, the population of Ireland has increased by about 17% virtually all of which is due to inward migration. Indeed, the CSO recently stated that 20% of those now living in Ireland were not even born in the country.

Quite apart from the demand generated by such far-reaching demographic changes, there are major cultural and societal issues around such a rapid increase in population. However, Fine Gael has actively worked to close down debate on the topic by labelling those voicing concerns as part of some fringe extremist far-right. This is in spite of overwhelming public unease over accelerated rates of immigration into Ireland.

Fine Gael’s post-electoral wheeling and dealing political culture has had a corrosive effect on democracy in Ireland.  This is illustrated by falling turnouts in elections. In the 2024 general election, turnout at 59.7% was the lowest recorded in the history of the state. That figure was even lower than a turnout of 61.3% recorded in the 1923 general election – that was just months after the end of Ireland’s bloody and divisive civil war.

That hollowing out of Ireland’s democratic process is also evident in the lack of a credible political opposition. With Fine Gael doing sweet heart deals with their former political opponents Fianna Fáil and just about anyone else, the role of opposition has fallen by default to a left wing Sinn Féin led by Mary Lou McDonald.

However, McDonald and the rest of the left have failed to land any serious punches in the last two general elections even against a highly unpopular government. In fact, McDonald’s Sinn Féin’s vote actually fell by 5% in the 2024 general election.

One reason for this is that it could be said that Fine Gael has stolen much of the ideological playbook of Ireland’s left. This might not be as ridiculous as it sounds. Based on its enacted policies in areas like public spending, housing, immigration and gender ideology, Fine Gael is now somewhere to the left of Britain’s Labour Party and most other similar centre left parties in Europe.

For Fine Gael, being popular is what is now important and it appears to believe that populist leftist policies are the most likely ones to keep it in power. Of course, this has immediately placed the Irish left at a disadvantage. Not only are Fine Gael implementing many of its policies but they are doing so with gusto with windfall corporation taxes from American multinationals.

Sinn Féin and the Irish left are now reduced to largely performative outrage. Their political unique selling point these days appears to be not that the government’s policies are wrong (Sinn Féin are now on the same ideological page on everything from immigration to gender ideology) but that the government is not spending enough money. This is an argument the opposition is unlikely to ever win against a government implementing their leftist policies and with access to windfall corporation taxes.

Fine Gael’s Ireland is a highly centralised entity based around Dublin and its power cliques. In many respects, it resembles more an administration than a democratic government answerable to an electorate. Occupying a position of special privilege in this administration, we also now have the malign influence of Ireland’s powerful (and unelected) NGOs whose influence seems to count for more than the Irish electorate these days.

Democracy may not be quite dead in Ireland yet but there continues to be troubling omens about its health. It’s worth recalling that in 1932, Fine Gael lost a historic general election having received 35% of the popular vote. Fine Gael may have lost that election but ultimately, Irish democracy won the day. The same can hardly be said of Fine Gael today who, with barely 20% of electoral support, are now firmly embedded in government.

These days, Fine Gael look more like the party of perpetual power than a party guided by the ideology and principles of its founders.   This has seen the transformation of a centre right political party into one that would now appear to be diametrically opposed to the core principles of the party’s own founders.

Today, the public face of that party is epitomised by leader Simon Harris and deputy leader Helen McEntee. In keeping with the modern Fine Gael, both exemplify a superficiality and a lack of any achievements of note after more than a decade in power.

In the 20^th century, Fine Gael played a pivotal role in building the institutions of an independent and democratic Ireland. In the 21^st century, it appears to be more the case that the same party has devoted itself to dismantling much of that same Ireland in pursuit of its own lust for power.

It’s not just ordinary Irish people who should feel aggrieved about Ireland’s growing democratic deficit. The people who should feel most aggrieved about Fine Gael’s extended grip on power in Ireland are traditional Fine Gael supporters.