An Irish election in a time of staggering debt and quiet rage

Under grey February skies in the County Dublin constituency of Dún Laoghaire, councillor Mary Mitchell O'Connor dashes to shake voters' hands with the unfeigned energy of an election winner. In her smart black coat and and pink scarf, this local primary school headteacher could embody the youthful politics of hope anywhere across Europe. "You know me [most parents certainly seem to], I have integrity. I'm not making promises, but I'll work hard and do my best", O'Connor tells voters in O'Donnell Gardens. Most are civil enough, but one old woman slams the door in the canvasser's face. "Go away. I won't vote. I want nothing to do with any of you." Hope, integrity and realistic promises are in short supply as the Republic of Ireland heads towards its 31st general election on 25 February, though voter anger is not. Thanks to the Celtic Tiger economy, Irish men and women had felt rich for the first time in their history. Then it stalled and crashed. The new government will inherit staggering debts, mostly incurred by speculation-crazy banks and property developers, underwritten by the state and set to bankrupt it. Many suspect some sort of debt default is unavoidable, even desirable. There have been no riots, but quiet rage is palpable on the city centre streets of Dublin. Busted banks It is a surreal time in which to conduct a seemingly conventional election campaign when an economic crisis has fused with a crisis of political trust, just as corporate debt is enmeshed with sovereign debt. Ireland's busted banks look like Britain's, only worse. The property implosion, like America's, boasts a glut of abandoned sites and "ghost estates, albeit in a country with a population of only 4.5 million and a GDP of about £150bn), not strikingly bigger than Greater Birmingham's. Ireland's anguished cuts debate is familiar to British ears too, but far more acute. So is mistrust of politicians and bankers, not to mention corruption. Suicides among young people are on the rise and Ireland's most tragic export, its people, are leaving again – 100,000 since the bust. "Fear that our children will emigrate lies deep in the Irish psyche," says O'Connor. Canvassing in O'Donnell Gardens, she cannot be personally confident of becoming a TD (MP) in Ireland's lower house, the Dail, in this socially-mixed, four-seater constituency. She is only second on the Fine Gael (FG) party list and competing for Dún Laoghaire's 90,000 votes – turnout is expected to be angrily high – against more established figures. But one result is as certain as electoral politics ever can be. Talk of new citizens' parties to cleanse the system has evaporated. The old parties still stand. So when the Dáil meets on 9 March its 166 TDs will elect Enda Kenny, FG's uncharismatic party leader with the bucolic County Mayo accent, as next taoiseach (prime minister). He will replace Fianna Fáil's (FF) deeply discredited Brian Cowen, former finance minister (2004-8) and taoiseach (2008-11), the Irish Gordon Brown. Who says so? Not just the pundits and pollsters, who put Fine Gael ahead of Labour by 35% to 22%. Even the ruling FF admits the game is up. Outgoing finance minister Brian Lenihan said so on television last week, in a remarkable departure from the usual never-say-die election tradition. This time FF are not even fielding the 83 candidates needed to obtain a Dáil majority, not that anyone has since FF last did in 1977. The unthinkable has happened to one of Europe's most successful 20th century parties: it is in meltdown, forced back into a core vote strategy. The steely new FF leader, Micheal Martin insists like David Cameron that cuts are the fastest way to the growth that will pay off its €85bn debt to the EU and IMF. Labour thinking is more like British Labour's, FG's cautiously inbetween. But FF, now pledging to reform the pork barrel, crony-prone political system it has manipulated for decades, is polling as low as 14% and could be reduced to a 25 TD rump. O'Connor's hopes in Dún Laoghaire depend on FF's collapse. Mild-mannered And what of Enda Kenny, the man set to inherit this mess? He ducked last week's leaders debate on TV, ostensibly because its acerbic host, Vincent Browne, Ireland's Jeremy Paxman, had suggested he shoot himself, but actually because he's hopeless on TV. When Kenny answered a difficult question well at a recent press conference reporters clapped him. Kenny will win anyway and is doing three TV debates, one in Irish which he speaks more eloquently. Economic growth and exports are picking up, but the banks' debts got worse again last week and the Economist magazine fears that debt may still reach 120% of GDP by 2015. To the outside eye Georgian and Victorian Dublin's glass-and-steel makeover still looks impressive, bars and shops on Grafton Street are still busy, the sleek new trams still run. But many are braced for worse ahead. The mild-mannered Kenny, 59 and a primary schoolteacher himself before becoming a TD in 1975, faces a string of gruelling EU summits within days of taking office. With Labour's Gilmore as his deputy, he will have an electoral mandate to try and renegotiate lower interest rates on Ireland's loans and longer to pay. With 439,000 still out of work, 13.4% of the work force, jobs is the word on everyone's lips. Angela Merkel's voters are angry too and Kenny faces hard-nosed demands that Ireland give up its globally attractive 12.5% rate of corporation tax. The tax rate is a red line for all Dublin parties. As Sinn Féin urge unilateral repudiation of the debt and more borrowing, Kenny's critics know Ireland is too small to achieve anything alone in the EU and will be seeking co-debtor allies like Greece and Portugal as well as sympathy, which is plentiful. The best his admirers can come up with is an old Irish question: "Is he a chief or a chairman?" It was charismatic chiefs, taoiseachs like Bertie Ahern (1997-2008), whose glad-handing style and God-like status helped steer Ireland from growing prosperity into unsustainable boom. In 2011, a more collegiate style of chairman's leadership may be more appropriate. Ireland is about to find out. The voting system Ireland's parliamentarians are elected by the single transferable vote system in constituencies of three, four and five seats. Voters indicate their first, second and subsequent choices for candidates listed alphabetically on the ballot paper. If a voter's first choice is eliminated, his vote transfers to his second choice; if that candidate is eliminated the vote goes to the third choice, and so on. In the last election in 2007, Fianna Fáil won 41% of the vote and 77 seats out of 166. They formed a coalition with six Greens, who pulled the plug on FF last month and face annihilation now. Fine Gael rose by 20 to 51 (31% of MPs on 27.3% of the votes) in 2007 while Labour got 20 and Sinn Féin four.