Ireland is falling out of love with Sinn Fein

Is the Sinn Fein star starting to wane? Support for the party has hit its lowest level for four years according to a poll for the influential Business Post newspaper. While Sinn Fein still remains the most popular party in the Republic, it has dropped seven points since October 2023.

A reason for the loss of support has been its prevarication around the question of immigration; riots gripped Dublin in late November after an attack by an Algerian man on three children in the heart of the city. Since then, the so-called ‘land of a thousand welcomes’ has grappled with arson attacks on asylum seeker hotels and seen the government reduce welfare benefits and accommodation for Ukrainian refugees.

Most Sinn Fein voters are fine with this sort of stuff, incidentally. A majority of those who support the party take a dim view of immigration compared with their compatriots; over 70 per cent said too many were entering the country.