One of the strangest features of politics at present is that young people are flocking to Sinn Féin. Yet, behind the populist sloganeering the party’s policies across a range of areas are clearly hostile to the younger generation and pander instead to the interests of well-off older people.
For instance, climate change is issue of the age and will affect the lives of younger voters in the years to come. But Sinn Féin policy is to oppose carbon taxes, recognised by environmentalists and economists alike as the only way to change behaviour of individuals, corporations and governments sufficiently to protect the planet.
Another example of the party’s attempt to appeal to older voters is its opposition to property tax. Sinn Féin claims to be in favour of taxing the wealthy yet ignores the fact that more than 90 per cent of the wealth of this State is tied up in property. Opposing property tax favours older property owners who have generally paid off their mortgages and are sitting on valuable assets.
This approach is also evident in the party's opposition to raising the pension age
Having generated considerable support among the younger age groups over the past decade, Sinn Féin now seems bent on winning over their elders with policies blatantly designed to cater for the interests of the wealthiest older generation in the country’s history.
This approach is also evident in the party’s opposition to raising the pension age. A carefully calibrated policy of gradually raising the age at which people will be entitled to the State pension age was announced as far back as 2007. This approach was initiated to take account of increased life expectancy, the ability of many older people to keep working after the age of 65 and the fact that the State will ultimately be bankrupted by its pension liabilities unless some action is taken.
The initial decision was to raise the pension age from 65 to 66 in 2014. It was due to go up to 67 at the beginning of 2021 but it became an issue in the general election and Fianna Fáil called for the deadline to be postponed. A Pensions Commission was established in the aftermath of that decision and it reported last October.
One of its key recommendations was that in the interests of intergenerational fairness and sustainability the State pension age should rise in quarterly increments to 67 between 2028 and 2031. The report also recommended that it should then gradually increase to 68 by 2039.
No surprise that this recommendation was rejected by Sinn Féin which committed itself to restore the pension age to 65. What this means, in reality, is that many over-65s will have their State pension plus income from full-time or part-time jobs on which incidentally they pay considerably less tax than younger people. The intergenerational unfairness of the Sinn Féin position is glaring, but their pandering to older people has not done them any damage with younger voters.
The social issue widely believed to have generated the surge in support for Sinn Féin is cost of housing. Here again, despite its rhetoric about the duty of the State to ensure that every family is housed adequately, the party pursues policies that will prolong the current problem for the foreseeable future.
Sinn Féin is by far the most vocal at local authority level in whipping up nimbyish opposition to every proposed housing development. The cover for this blatant populist stance is that the party favours social housing rather than private development.
Many of the party’s young middle-class supporters have been attracted in the belief that it will ensure a big expansion in availability of affordable housing. But Sinn Féin’s solution is to focus solely on social housing and limit the numbers of private houses being built.
The scarcity of private housing will drive more and more middle-income people into dependence on social housing
This will ensure that the housing shortage – which has disillusioned young middle-class people with the mainstream parties – will continue indefinitely. That is an electoral bonus Sinn Féin is keen to harvest. The other side to this is that the scarcity of private housing will drive more and more middle-income people into dependence on social housing provided by the State and, ultimately, to dependence to Sinn Féin itself.
Another way of getting behind the rhetoric to see how the party would actually behave if in power is to compare response to the pandemic North and South. In Northern Ireland, where Sinn Féin is involved in Government, the pandemic payment to young people is about €100 a week. In the Republic it is €250, almost three times more. That has not stopped party leader Mary Lou McDonald from castigating Taoiseach Micheál Martin and his Ministers for their alleged parsimony.
Yet, for all the glaring contradictions in Sinn Féin policy there is little or no critical examination of the likely impact its policies would have in practice. The Coalition parties urgently need to find an effective way to communicate with the public to defend their own record and expose the reality of what Sinn Féin rule will entail.