Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald has indicated Sinn Féin voters should consider transferring to parties such as the Social Democrats and People Before Profit.
As parties shore up their final messages to voters in advance of polling tomorrow, her comments will be seen as a significant intervention and a potential overture to partners in government talks.
Speaking to reporters outside Government Buildings in Dublin, where Sinn Féin held its first election press engagement three weeks ago, Ms McDonald was asked to elaborate on her view that Sinn Féin voters should support parties of change.
“I think each constituency will differ, but I think we can identify parties like the Social Democrats which would share ideas on housing and other policies, People Before Profit candidates of the left, some other Independent candidates,” she said.
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Ms McDonald said people needed to vote not just for her party, but to change the government.
She added that it was not for her to tell people how to vote but to ask them to vote in the first instance for Sinn Féin.
Ms McDonald said there is a momentum behind her party, saying that she has heard of young people coming home to vote in the general election. “There is an unmistakable and a growing appetite for change,” she said, “and there’s a growing realisation that for that to happen, Sinn Féin has to maximise its vote and lead the effort to form a new government”.
She accused government parties of “scaremongering” on the economy in the run-in to polling day, with warnings about the potential of economic shocks from Fine Gael in particular a “mark of desperation” born of Simon Harris “recognising that the momentum for change is behind Sinn Féin”, with “older establishment parties” clinging to a narrative that it was “them or nothing”.
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Ms McDonald reiterated the Sinn Féin request to the electorate to “lend us your vote”. She said that the campaign had not been low key but in fact had been “very eventful”, arguing the coalition’s expectations of a re-election had been upended during recent weeks.
Asked about potential coalition partners for her party, and what her path to power would be, she said she was going to talk to everybody once all had gathered their own mandate. “I’m not making eyes at anyone,” she said. “I believe in absolute fidelity to my cause,” she said, joking: “We’re not at the flirtatious stage just yet. We have to get to first base before we pass it.”
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