Election 2024 live updates: Latest poll results show momentum is with Sinn Féin, says McDonald

Support for Fine Gael has slumped with just days to go before the general election, according to the final Irish Times/Ipsos B&A opinion poll of the general election campaign.
The Fine Gael share of the vote has fallen by six points in less than two weeks, reflecting a campaign that has been littered with missteps, and now trails both Fianna Fáil and Sinn Féin.
As the parties embark on a frantic final four days of campaign, and with the three-way televised leaders’ debate scheduled for tomorrow night, the three largest parties are all within two percentage points of one another.
Fine Gael’s general election campaign is “shuddering to a halt” while Aontú’s increase in popularity is “one of the untold stories” of the election, according to party leader Peadar Tóibín.
He was speaking at Aontú’s housing policy launch on Monday afternoon, which reporter Jack White attended.
Mr Tóibín said he was “delighted” with the latest and final Irish Times/Ipsos B&A opinion poll of the campaign in which his party maintained its 3 per cent footing, having risen by two since a prior survey in September.
He described Mr Harris’s walking away from carer Charlotte Fallon, as seen in the now-viral clip, as “symbolic of this Government”.
“Because, in many ways, in Government, they have walked away from carers,” he said.
At the housing launch, he outlined his party’s aspiration to reach 60,000 houses each year over the lifetime of the next Dáil.
This would include 15,000 social and affordable homes, with an increase of €1.5 billion in expenditure, the party said.
However, Mr Tóibín said the biggest problem in housing currently is the number of vacant homes, including those owned by local authorities, which he said is “akin to food being exported in ships in the middle of a famine.”
The party’s housing policy proposes 8,000 annual vacant home grants of up to €70,000 at a yearly cost of €560 million to get houses back into use.
The party is also pledging a reinstatement of the eviction ban for two years and a two-year ban on short-term lettings in large towns and cities.
From the University of Limerick.
New research has found that many voters who used a website designed to support them in making more informed decisions at the polls switched their initial voting preference in favour of a different candidate.
The research was conducted by Dr Rory Costello, a lecturer in University of Limerick’s Department of Politics and Public Administration and founder of WhichCandidate.ie; a voting aid application that operates by matching users to the candidates most aligned with their policy views.
The WhichCandidate team, which is based in UL, has revealed that the majority of users of the website who received results that strongly conflicted with their original vote intention changed their mind.
There was also evidence of greater adherence to the WhichCandidate results for undecided voters, young voters, urban voters, and those not interested in politics.
A survey exploring the impact of using a voting aid application on voter choice was extended to over 48,000 people who received results from WhichCandidate during the final days of the 2024 European elections. Of the 26,100 (54%) respondents, it emerged that 36% changed their minds and switched their first preference on the ballot, with that figure rising to 57% when the candidate that the user originally intended to vote for was ranked outside of the top five candidates in the results.
* The Irish Times uses the WhichCandidate.ie tool which can be found here.
Jack White reports
Dublin college students have gathered in the city centre today, calling on the electorate to vote on Friday for parties with policies that will allow them to “build their futures in Ireland”.
Representatives of several student unions, including University College Dublin, Dublin City University, and Trinity College Dublin, gathered on Grafton Street calling on passersby to vote with students in mind to allow them to contribute to society here, “rather than being forced to emigrate”.
Although not endorsing any party in particular on Monday, TCDSU president Jenny Maguire said certain party manifestos have “strong hitting student-directed points”.
“Our issue is, we’d like to see it. Fine Gael have announced that they will be abolishing third-level fees, but just in September, they announced that it wasn’t a priority.
“So we would like to see all parties, whether you’re in opposition, whether you’re in government, to take students seriously and to raise the issues of students on the ground,” she said.
The group is encouraging voters to “get out and consider students” and young adults more generally when they head to the polls on Friday and urged them to raise student issues when canvassers call to their doors in the lead-up.
The lack of student accommodation, particularly affordable student accommodation is a primary issue being raised with Ms Maguire noting a deficit of 30,000 student beds amid chronic underfunding.
This is alongside the low wages earned by students and student nurses.
“So much of the most important sectors in Irish society rely on the exploitation of students, and so let’s start treating them well,” she said.
“The trolley crisis comes around every year like it’s the beginning of the festive season, but those issues begin right in academia.
“They begin with an underfunded system with undervalued nurses, undervalued healthcare workers, and that applies across the higher education sector, and so we’re encouraging them to take higher education seriously,” she said.
Emigration was another concern highlighted by the group, with Ms Maguire describing the emigration rate last year, which was at its highest since 2015 according to the Central Statistics Office, as “absurd”.
“For such a wealthy country, we are just throwing people away,” she said, adding: “If we want to take the crisis that we’ve been facing my whole life seriously, we need to begin in the third level sector.”
The majority of her friends have emigrated, she said, spread across London, Manchester and Berlin, describing it as a “natural progression” among young adults, though she described herself as “stubbornly optimistic”.
“I love Ireland and I want to stay but the current situation means it’s basically impossible,” she said.
Cormac McQuinn reports:
Sinn Féin has been accused of a “disgusting attempt” to politicise homeless figures “for their own end”.
The remarks from a spokeswoman for Minister for Housing Darragh O’Brien come after Sinn Féin’s housing spokesman Eoin Ó Broin called on him to publish reports on the number of people in emergency accommodation and how many people rough sleeping before the election.
The emergency accommodation report is due to be published part-way through polling day on Friday while the rough sleeper report is expected next week.
The latter report will be published by the Dublin Regional Homeless Executive (DRHE), not Mr O’Brien’s Department of Housing.
The spokeswoman for Mr O’Brien said: “The monthly emergency accommodation figures will be published, as normal, on Friday at 2pm.
“In 2020, in an effort to ‘depoliticise’ the publication of the figures the Department put them onto a regular schedule publishing them on the last Friday of every month at 2pm.
“The figures are published after they have been filed by every local authority and checked and verified by the Department.
“This is done independent of the Minister.”
She added: “What Sinn Fein are doing is quite frankly a disgusting attempt to politicise the figures to their own end.
“There are people – men, women and children behind these numbers and that’s what everyone needs to remember.”
She said that the reasons people enter emergency accommodation are complex and people are leaving such accommodation “all the time”.
She highlighted how “between 2020 and Q3 2024 – 29,765 people were exited from or prevented from entering emergency accommodation.”
The spokeswoman also said: “it’s the Governments job to ensure that if someone does enter emergency accommodation that they spend as little time as possible there.
“Ultimately, how we do that is by scaling up the supply of new social homes.”
And here it is, the latest geopolitical map of Kerry that will be studied by geographers for many decades hence. Funny enough, I don’t see any reference to Tom McEllistrim anywhere. Perhaps they could do a new map with No 3s in it for him! (Thanks to Alan Kinsella). Kilgarvan is the free-for-all region.
Conor Pope was at the Mary Lou McDonald press event in Cabra a little earlier than Monday.
Here is his full report on her interview with the media.
Cormac McQuinn writes:
Sinn Féin’s housing spokesman Eoin Ó Broin has challenged Minister Darragh O’Brien to publish reports on the number of people in emergency accommodation and how many people rough sleeping before the election.
He said the minister is “sitting on” the two reports and that the one on the numbers in emergency accommodation in October is not due to be published until part way through polling day on Friday and the rough sleepers one is not expected to be released until next week.
Mr Ó Broin said it is Sinn Féin’s understanding that the reports “indicate an increase both in the number of adults and children in emergency accommodation, but also a significant increase in the number of sleepers.”
At a Sinn Féin press conference in Dublin he said that “Under Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael’s government homelessness, and particularly child homelessness has reached levels nobody ever thought was imagininable.”
He said homelessness is up 380 per cent since Fine Gael took office in 2011 and up 69 per cent among adults and 72 per cent among children since Mr O’Brien became minister in 2020.
“There have never been as many adults, children, families, singles and pensioners in emergency accommodation since contemporary records began,” Ó Broin said.
Last month it was reported that homelessness reached another record in September, now numbering 14,760 people, including 4,561 children in 2,133 families, latest figures show.
Mr Ó Broin set out his party’s plan to end long-term homelessness and rough sleeping by 2030.
It includes reintroducing the ban on no-fault evictions for six months and funding 6,500 tenant-in-situ acquisitions for private rental tenants with eviction notices to prevent becoming homeless over five years.
He said Sinn Féin would double the delivery of social homes from the current government targets.
I’m sure the Green Party will not be overjoyed by the results of the parsing of party manifestos by Dr Cara Augustenborg and colleagues, on behalf of Friends of the Earth.
Jack Horgan-Jones reported on the findings this morning.
On the back of it, it was unsurprising to see tweets like this one from Labour leader Ivana Bacik. And this responding one from Eamon Ryan, former leader of the Greens, fresh back from COP 29.
Conor Pope was at a media event in Cabra where the Sinn Féin leader spoke. Here is his report:
Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald has welcomed the results of the latest Irish Times/Ipsos B&A poll, the last before the election and said a significant drop in support for Fine Gael and a slight boost for Sinn Féin was a sign that momentum is with the party.
The state of the parties, when undecided voters are excluded, and compared with the most recent poll on November 14th, is: Fianna Fáil 21 per cent (up two points); Sinn Féin 20 per cent (up one); and Fine Gael 19 per cent (down six).
“It’s very clear to us that there is momentum now in the campaign. It’s clear now that there can be a government led by Sinn Féin, I believe that momentum will intensify in the coming day,” she said.
She said that Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin “seems to be intent on putting Fine Gael back in government.
“That would make their term in government 19 years long. I think the Irish people increasingly view that prospect with dread, because they know what Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil in government means.
“It has meant a cost of living crisis. It has meant a housing crisis. It has meant unaffordable childcare. It has meant far too many of our young people concluding that they don’t really have a chance here, and voting with their feet and leaving. So yeah, there is momentum now with us. It’s now very, very clear that there can be government beyond Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil.”
Olivia Kelleher reports:
Disability care worker Charlotte Fallon whose exchange with Taoiseach Simon Harris went viral over the weekend after she told that him carers were being ignored has said that she is “hopeful” but “not confident” that real changes will be made in the sector.
Mr Harris phoned Ms Fallon to apologise for not giving her the time she “deserved” to discuss her concerns as he was canvassing in Kanturk, Co Cork last Friday.
In an interview with Cork Today on C103FM, this morning Ms Fallon said that it was beyond time to rectify the 18 per cent pay difference between disability workers and those employed within the HSE.
She is pleased that her conversation with Mr Harris has shone a light on the issues facing her and others in her sector.
“Yes hopefully (Something good will come of this). Section 39 workers have been ignored long enough. We were on the same pay scale as HSE and Section 38. The crash happened and we all took a cut. We fought for it. We went on dispute for it.
We had an agreement with the WRC that they got reneged. It is not just for the money. We are being completely ignored for the care that we give. We are hiring people and training people and then they are moving to different sectors. More needs to be done.
They have put back conversations with our WRC and with SIPTU time after time. We are ignored. There was a letter sent personally to Simon Harris and it was ignored.”
Ms Fallon, who works with St Joseph’s voluntary charity for people with disabilities, said she couldn’t understand why people were ‘congratulating’ the Taoiseach as he walked around the supermarket canvassing.
“I was seeing people shaking his hand and all that and I said to one of the workers ‘I can believe everybody is congratulating him and things’ and he was like ‘he (Harris) is grand – he is one of the all right ones.’
That kind of put fuel to the fire a bit. He walked down and was in by the corner and said hello. I don’t know – something just overtook me and I said ‘sorry can I ask you a question.’
It came out of me. I am very passionate. I love my job. It is something that is very close to my heart and something that needs to be said. It is something that needs to be done. There is not enough being done for people.
I am so proud that it is getting out there now and people are voicing more concern. They are speaking up and they are being heard. Because people have been shut off and phones have been hung up on them.”
Ms Fallon indicated that all she wanted was a comprehensive answer when she impulsively asked Mr Harris a question on the campaign trail.
“I was surprised at his reaction towards me. After the phone call with him (Harris) I realise it was a subject that was very close to his heart too and he said he gets very passionate about it himself. It overtook him. Maybe I did surprise him. I hope I didn’t come across as being too much.
I just wanted answers for people. He was the one who suggested that (visiting her workplace). The only thing I asked of him was ‘no media’ – none of these cameras anything for a picture moment. No. Our lads need to be protected.
It’s a leader-rich environment on the airwaves this morning. As Simon Harris was being interviewed on RTÉ, Mary Lou McDonald of Sinn Féin was being interviewed by Pat Kenny on Newstalk.
The bulk of the interviews parsed the party’s policies on housing and health, with nothing substantially new coming out of it. McDonald defended the end of the ‘Help the Buy’ scheme on a phased basis and pointed out that Sinn Féin has proposed changes in stamp duty that will help buyers. On health, she canvassed Sinn Féin’s policy guarantee jobs to newly qualified front-line workers in the services.
She has said the reality is “there is a crazy situation where, on the one hand, full time posts are being suppressed. On the other hand, the cost of agency has literally ballooned … Everyone who relies on the health services is being short staffed and short changed. We’re not getting valued for money either.”
Her solution is that for all health graduates, the practice will be ended of “leaving them endlessly on balance, waiting and waiting.
“We’re going to ensure that they are appointed,” she pledged.
The party’s pledge to initiate an inquiry into RTÉ’s coverage of the Gaza war is more problematic. McDonald told Kenny that it was only one line in a manifesto of several hundred players, but it is the only line that has carried the most impact.
McDonald has spent a lot of time in recent days trying to explain the pledge and has rowed back somewhat, now saying the party will accept an inquiry from Coimisiún na Meán (which is the regulator) and also from the broadcaster’s own internal editorial board.
Again asked about what is the party’s concern about RTÉ’s coverage, McDonald claims that she is making no judgment. “I am saying the Irish public broadcaster, on behalf of the Irish people, that locates that position in the Irish democratic space, should embrace, not become alarmed, every single mechanism, including peer reviews, independent of politics that verify and confirm.”
Asked about the NUJ claim that Sinn Féin wants to stifle the media, saying the party has no interest in stymieing anything.
On Ukraine, Kenny asks is Sinn Féin being hypocritical by saying it support Ukraine while calling for all arms to Ukraine and to the warring parties being withdrawn.
She replies that Putin is the aggressor but adds that any end to the war will not happen militarily but through diplomacy and politics.
“I actually think there’s a recognition of that, unspoken perhaps, within the international community, but it now needs to be set out. I think the Irish Government has to do two things, stand squarely with Ukraine to face down Putin by means of sanctions and every international lever. But we also have to say at some point this conflict has to end.”
Gerard Hutch is putting in a big campaign. He has not actually promoted any specific policies that I can see. He has criticised derelict housing and challenged politicians demanding change in this video. But his candidacy will be based on his celebrity, or, to be more accurate, his notoriety.
He has produced a series of videos which are very much, erm, artisan but it’s also clear that he is getting traction from both the national media and also on the doorsteps, where some people in the inner city regard him as a Robin Hood figure.
He won’t get much support in the far western reaches of his constituency but if the turnout is high around his base of Buckingham Street, he could be in the mix. Dublin Central is always such a lottery. Impossible to predict.
The remainder of the interview with the Taoiseach on Claire Byrne cycles through the big election issues such as the economy, immigration, health, the cost-of-living and housing.
Given the election of Donal Trump in the US, and uncertainty on whether or not he will make good on his promise to impose tariffs, Harris is asked what he will do in the event of an economic shock.
He replies that his party is committed to continuing the building up of a buffer. The pace of Fine Gael making good on its manifesto commitments will depend on the resources available, he adds.
“Anybody promising people a kind of a magic wand solution isn’t telling the truth,” he argues.
Asked about the comments by economist John FitzGerald that parties were making spending promises that were reminiscent of the (reckless) 2007 election campaign, Harris replies the Fitzgerald has a job to do but the Government must frame its economic policies around “other realities”.
He refers to the cost-of-living issue and says he has to “take steps to reduce (the costs) structurally”.
“That’s why we’re outlining sensible measures around childcare, around cost of education, around protecting our pensioners, because this is good for our domestic economy.”
He will not surmise on his target for how many Fine Gael TDs will be elected but defends the new candidate selection, arguing that many of the councillors have a lot of experience at a local level.
His response to government-formation is very similar to that of Micheál Martin’s. This is what he says:
Hardly a ringing endorsement of the Louth senator.
Harris tells Byrne that if John McGahon had been convicted of assault in a criminal court of law, he would not be a Fine Gael candidate.
When Byrne asks him if he has seen the video of McGahon (in which he strikes Breen White four or five times around the head) Harris replies he was “horiffied” by what he saw.
Asked if he would ask the people of Louth to vote for John McGahon, he does not say yes but gives the candidate backing that could be charitably described as conditional. He also points out the party has two candidates in Co Louth. This is what he said:
The Taoiseach is being interviewed by Claire Byrne on RTÉ radio now. The topic immediately turns to his encounter with disability sector worker Charlotte Fallon on Friday night.
He apologises immediately and repeatedly.
“I can certainly take criticism and it’s quite an important part of our democracy. And you know, I didn’t meet my own standards, let alone anybody else’s.”
When Byrne puts it to to him, he admits that he “really came up short”.
“The point is I was wrong, when you’re wrong in politics, when you’re wrong in life. I was always willing to own it, to put my hands up, to apologise, to do that immediately, and then to be directed by it. And I did have a very good conversation with Charlotte,” he said.
And then another apology: “I let myself down, and I’m deeply annoyed with myself, and there’s no one more annoyed with me than me, and particularly on an issue that I feel incredibly passionate about.”
Asked about the impact of this episode on his party’s prospects, he argues he never bought into the theory that his party would coast the election. He said that the three parties would be evenly matched and that people would put what happened at the weekend into context. “Well, I don’t think fair people and decent people will judge me on 40 seconds. They’ll judge me on my record.
“They’ll judge me on what I’m going to do over the next five years, what Fine Gael wants to do, and the plans that we’ve put forward to for once and for all, fix and rectify disability.”
The Simon Harris locomotive has been derailed and it’s going to take a supreme effort to get it back on track. The Taoiseach had an extraordinarily benign six months after taking over as leader from Leo Varadkar and, seemingly, could do no wrong.
There were signs of some fraying in the past fortnight but the unravelling, when it came over the weekend, was brutal. His misstep in behaving petulantly with Charlotte Fallon during an encounter in Kanturk, Co Cork was captured in video. It has done untold damage to both him and his party.
Harris will be on the Claire Byrne on RTÉ radio show shortly for what could be a very difficult interview. He has to emerge it from it at the very least unscathed and then put in a tour de force in the three-way leader debate tomorrow night. That will be a difficult challenge, to say the least, as he will have to hold his own against the other two leaders, while at the same time showing humility and a caring side.
At about the same time as Harris is doing his interview on RTÉ, Mary Lou McDonald will be interviewed by Pat Kenny on Newstalk.
Duncan Smith has tweeted about it and our own Sarah Burns has also written about it. For the first time in an Irish election, engagement with the voter has occurred by means of a candidate having a conversation with the doorbell as (sometimes) the recipient of the message sits inside the house.
We will get used to it but I’m not used to it yet.
The party leaders are doing a series of interviews on broadcast media today. Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin has just done an interview on Morning Ireland and Sinn Féin’s Mary Lou McDonald will be on Pat Kenny’s show on Newstalk after 9am.
Martin faced a series of detailed and probing questions from Audrey Carville on Morning Ireland. The main takeaway, from a political perspective, was his belief that the next government will comprise three parties, not two. It seems to confirm Damian Loschser’s analysis from this morning’s Irish Times poll that a two-party government is not possible if the results of the poll are replicated on election day.
He was asked about the Charlotte Fallon encounter with Simon Harris and her criticism of pay in Section 39 organisations. Martin conceded that that issue needed to be addressed.
He agreed that parity was needed with equivalent staff in the HSE and said it was a “frustration” that a deal hammered out a year ago for a 8 per cent pay rise has not been delivered in some organisations. He argued that there are 1,100 such organisations and he “did not want to pretend” it was an easy issue trying to ensure it happened across the board in a timely fashion.
He was also quizzed on the means test for carers, the continuing lack of services for children with additional needs, and the shortage of teachers in primary and secondary schools. On the latter point, he agreed with Carville that there could be incentives to encourage teachers back to Ireland from abroad to meet the deficit of 1,500 across primary and secondary schools. However, he said those incentives should not be “perverse”.
There was a back-and-forth on what a Fianna Fáil government would do in the event of a Trump presidency deciding to impose tariffs, and the impact that would have on windfall taxes from US corporations with bases in Ireland. Carville invited him to say if he would cut spending or increase spending. Like every other political leader he would not go there, referring to the “rainy day fund” which he claims will have €50 billion in reserve by 2031 under a Fianna Fáil government. He also refused to argue on the basis of a recession scenario.
Towards the end of the interview Carville asked him about the shape of the government after the election, if Fianna Fáil was a part of it. His answer:
Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin will be on Morning Ireland shortly. Later he will be canvassing in Fingal West with Lorraine Clifford-Lee and in Dublin Bay North with Deirdre Heney and Tom Brabazon. Minister for Housing Darragh O’Brien and Cormac Devlin will officially open ten new social homes in Dún Laoghaire.
Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald will be canvassing in Cabra this morning and in East Wall in the afternoon. She is also doing a round of broadcast interviews on during the day.
Its housing spokesman Eoin Ó Broin and Louise O’Reilly will be calling on Darragh O’Brien to release the latest homeless figures.
Labour will launch its Dublin manifesto at 10am at the GPO. Leader Ivana Bacik and Dublin MEP Aodhán Ó Ríordáin will be there.
The Social Democrats to publish its plan for supporting families. Jennifer Whitmore and Councillor Jen Cummins will do the launch.
The Green Party will announce its key priorities in the areas of arts and culture.
Independent Ireland will highlight cost-of-living issues.
People Before Profit will call for an end to the “Pay and Number Strategy” health service recruitment embargo at a press conference in Dublin.
Politicians will react reflexively to opinion polls by saying the only poll that matters is the one on election day. However, they never discount them, and, indeed, carry out their own polling. The truth is that they lead every one by the nose as they provide the only measured indicator of the direction in which voter allegiance is going.
This morning’s Irish Times/Ipsos B&A opinion poll will set the agenda for the final week of the election campaign. As is noted in the digest, and in the fantastic analysis from Pat Leahy and Damian Loscher it does not fully capture the impact of the tetchy encounter between Taoiseach Simon Harris and disability worker Charlotte Fallon in Kanturk on Friday evening.
That moment was captured on video and has been watched 3.4 million times since Friday evening. It prompted an immediate apology from Harris but the party has shipped enormous damage at a crucial stage of the campaign.
Fianna Fáil finds itself as the most supported party and it’s clear (and there was evidence of it on the doorsteps) that Sinn Féin is beginning to recover after a year-long decline. The overall result, if repeated in the election, will mean very difficult arithmetic in terms of forming a government.