Depending on how you define them, there are at least 60 candidates running in the upcoming general election on policies that could be characterised as anti-immigration or far-right.
That represents less than 10 per cent of the 685 declared candidates seeking election to Dáil Éireann across 43 constituencies in the November 29th election, but it is significantly more than in any recent general election when candidates of the far right amounted to no more than a minor sideshow.
These candidates are seeking to capitalise on moderate success in the local elections in June when six men with explicitly anti-immigration views won seats on councils. All six are running again for national office.
Do any of them have a chance of winning a seat in the 34th Dáil? Political experts caution against both over- and understating their prospects.
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“Some of them did reasonably okay in the local and European elections. But many thought they would do better,” said Gary Murphy, professor of politics at Dublin City University (DCU).
On the other hand, he says, “you would want to be completely foolish to write off some of the more well-known of them”.
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He pointed to a recent Irish Times poll showing 20 per cent support for “Independents/others”, a category that includes anti-immigration candidates.
One problem for these groups is the disorganisation and rivalry among them.
In the local elections in June, political groups such as the National Party and the Irish Freedom Party ran rival candidates in the same constituency, splitting the vote and resulting in none of them winning election.
This time, some have agreed to form a coalition, called the National Alliance, to co-ordinate candidates and maximise their vote.
The Alliance, which consists of the National Party, the Irish People, Ireland First and a number of Independents, is more than just a vote-sharing pact. All of the Alliance’s 32 candidates are running under a common platform. There was even an attempt to register it as a political party, which was rejected by An Coimisiún Toghcháin, the Electoral Commission.
This arrangement may in particular help Derek Blighe, a prominent anti-immigration activist and the leader of Ireland First, who is running in Cork North-Central. He received a respectable 25,000 first-preference votes in the European elections in Ireland South and wasn’t eliminated until the 19th count.
This time, Blighe is the only explicitly anti-immigration candidate in this five-seat constituency, meaning he has a reasonable chance of picking up the final seat.
However, the effectiveness of the National Alliance is blunted by the absence of other groups. One conspicuous absence is the Irish Freedom Party, which is running 16 candidates, including Glen Moore, who won a seat on South Dublin County Council in the local elections in June.
Other small far-right parties, such as Ben Gilroy’s Liberty Republic, which wants to freeze all immigration, legal and otherwise, are also outside the National Alliance umbrella, meaning the potential for the splits in the anti-immigration vote remain.
The National Party, which is a member of the National Alliance, will be hoping to build on the success of the local elections when it returned its first ever election candidate, Patrick Quinlan in Fingal.
However, the party has been weakened by a recent split. One faction, led by party founder Justin Barrett, advocates a more extreme, anti-democratic position. The other, led by Longford farmer James Reynolds, favours attempting to appeal to more mainstream voters.
Much of this split played out in the public eye when both men claimed ownership of €400,000 in gold bars which were stored in the party’s private vault.
After defeat in the European elections last June, Reynolds said he would never run for the National Party again, calling it a “toxic brand”. He is still listed as its leader on the party’s website but neither he nor Barrett are among the nine party candidates running in the general election.
Other candidates have managed to use social media to build up a large following and now arguably have greater name recognition than many established politicians.
Gavin Pepper, an Independent who won a seat on Dublin City Council earlier this year on an anti-immigration platform, is one. The Finglas man has attached significant support through online posts calling for mass deportations and seeking to link many of Ireland’s problems to immigration. This following, combined with some reportedly effective on the ground campaigning, potentially puts him in the running for a seat in Dublin North-West.
“It’s hard to know how much of a chance he has, but from talking to people on the ground, he is campaigning fairly well,” says Murphy.
“It’s a three-seater constituency so it might be a bit of a stretch but if he gets half a quota [of first-preference votes] he would be in with a shout.”
Next door in Dublin Central, fellow Independent candidate Malachy Steenson may also have a chance. Steenson organised some of the earliest anti-immigration protests, in 2022, when he led a large number of demonstrators against the housing of asylum seekers in East Wall in Dublin.
He channelled this into a successful run for a Dublin City Council seat earlier this year. Steenson is one of the more high-profile and experienced candidates running on an anti-immigration platform in Dublin but, like Pepper, he faces an uphill battle in the four-seater constituency, which has several other well-known anti-establishment candidates running.
“It’s a tough constituency because of Clare Daly coming into the fray,” Murphy says.
Daly, a left-wing politician who recently lost her European Parliament seat, has a well-organised campaign machine behind her and could mop up much of the anti-establishment vote, he says.
Another party to watch is Independent Ireland, which was founded last year and which returned 24 councillors and one MEP. It is not an explicitly anti-immigration party but several of its members who are running in the general election have espoused views that are critical of the Government’s immigration policy and they may have a chance of taking Dáil seats.
Party members include Philip Sutcliffe, a former coach of mixed martial arts (MMA) fighter Conor McGregor who sits on Dublin City Council. Last week Sutcliffe drew criticism for referring to “coloured guys” on O’Connell Street during a discussion on public safety.
Far-right parties have enjoyed a string of successes across the EU in recent years, even entering government in some cases. Similar success seems highly unlikely here, although the election may see the return of a handful of such candidates.
According to Prof Murphy, one limiting factor on their chances is that “some of the heat has gone from the issue of immigration”, a topic that dominated the headlines in the run-up to the local and European elections.
According to monthly snapshot polls run by The Irish Times, immigration dominated voter concerns for most of the year but by September had dropped to joint-fourth place. This may be as a result of tougher Government policies and a drop in the number of asylum seekers coming into Ireland.
Last month 1,053 people applied for asylum in Ireland, a decline of 48 per cent since last April.
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