Sinn Féin plans for Dublin

Gerry Adams and Mary Lou McDonald pictured with some of Dubin's local election candidates

The Irish media is a curious beast. On Tuesday of this week they attended a Sinn Féin press conference to launch the party's local candidates for Dublin and Dublin Sinn Féin's manifesto for the city. Running 30 candidates across 25 wards in four local authorities and with fear of Sinn Féin's electoral growth reaching hysterical levels in the capital, a neutral observer might think the media would have an interest in this.

As the Dublin manifesto points out, there are over 4,000 people homeless in Dublin and the price of a second hand home is now over half-a-million Euros. The Coalition Government broke its pledge to abolish hospital waiting lists within two years and instead of the promised 200,000 extra medical cards, there are 20,000 less. All this at a time when the deaths of 6,000 men, women and children annually was directly linked to poverty by Dr Jane Wilde of the Institute of Public Health.

At the start of the year, independent European experts stated that the 26 Counties failed every one of 27 indicators of good transport policy and yet Minister Brennan still wants to break up CIE and part privatise Dublin Bus without any sign of a plan. A neutral observer, unused to Irish politics, might think these issues merited some discussion.

Dublin Sinn Féin proposes innovative and radical solutions to many of these problems. Rather than break up our public transport system, why not further integrate it with the long awaited LUAS as a prelude to the creation of an all-Ireland transport policy?

In order to tackle the housing problem, why not use compulsory purchase orders at current use value to secure land, transfer surplus State and Church land to local authorities and only proceed with the sale of local authority homes to tenants when they will be replaced by at least one new home in the local authority housing stock?

Our friend, the neutral observer, could be forgiven for thinking that over 50 specific policy proposals in eight different areas concerning Ireland's largest city would be of interest to the Irish media.

But the press conference was instead dominated by Sinn Féin's response to failed Justice Minister Michael McDowell recycling old speeches the night before at the launch of his party's local election campaign.

As Sinn Féin President Gerry Adams observed: "Last night, Minister McDowell spent 13 pages recycling old speeches in order to attack republicans. He proposed no solution to the housing crisis causing untold suffering across the state.

"He came forward with no ideas on how the Progressive Democrats would deal with our underfunded health system. He failed to outline his proposals for dealing with increasing amounts of anti-social behaviour and Garda accountability. Clearly, when a party has no policies worth talking about, their only option is abuse. We have policies, and that's what I want to talk about."

But it is the bread and butter issues that are coming up on the doors across Dublin. Talking to Áine Ní Ghabhann, the party's second candidate in the competitive Cabra/Glasnevin Ward of Dublin City Council afterwards, she was clear what the issues of the election were.

"I've been out on the doorsteps since January and the issue of criminality and so forth is just not coming up," said Ní Ghabhann. "The people are not fools, they know an election is coming and they see that for all his talk McDowell provides no evidence. They're concerned about issues like health and housing.

"They see a government that has broken promise after promise after promise and they are looking for an alternative. There is a mood for change and judging by the positive response I'm getting in areas that wouldn't be Sinn Féin strongholds by any means, they're turning to Sinn Féin."

It was a view echoed by Tallaght Central candidate Seán Ó Cadhla, who said that the media was out of touch with feelings on the ground. "The first week of this campaign, with serious issues at stake at local level, in Europe and a referendum on the same day and all the media could find to talk about was who had the best poster," O Cadhla pointed out.

"These people are on a different planet. It is the policies and the politics that the people are interested in. They want to know how you intend to provide affordable and social housing. Two thousand deaths a year are related to fuel poverty and the government has increased the Fuel Allowance by less than three Euros over 20 years. These are the issues the media is ignoring, and these are the issues people are talking about on the doorsteps."

It is easy to see the reasoning behind the attacks. It is not just the elections, but fear. Not of imaginary sinister elements controlling Sinn Féin, but of a party the establishment, both political and media, simply cannot understand.

How can Sinn Féin pay to have big posters? The party relies on teams of dedicated activists who worked through the early hours of the mornings to get posters up while gangs of paid Fianna Fáil poster teams passed by. How can Sinn Féin afford quality literature? Our elected representatives take only the average industrial wage and the rest funds a party composed not of employees and officials, but of activists and comrades.

Such a thing is as far beyond the understanding of the rich and powerful of Ireland, as it is beyond our friend the neutral observer, who wonders why the media latches on to imaginary issues and pathetic PD publicity grabbing when Ireland's fastest growing party puts forward its proposals to tackle Ireland's fastest growing problems.