Ireland goes to the Polls - The Dark Legacy of the 33rd Dáil

"The word freedom is no longer understood in Ireland. We have no experience of the thing, and we have lost our conception of the idea.”

-Padraig Pearse, The Murder Machine

On the eve of the general election in Ireland, it’s worth reflecting on what I believe has been the most impactful government in the history of the State. The 33rd Dáil has fundamentally changed the country in unprecedented ways and has forever altered the relationship between the State and its people. It will echo in history.

The 2020 election in Ireland was unusual from the start. No clear winner emerged and the resulting uncertainty led to the first ever coalition between Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. The two parties originated amidst the Civil War where Cumann na nGaedheal (a precursor to Fine Gael) supported the Anglo-Irish Treaty which ended the War of Independence but partitioned the country while Fianna Fáil opposed it. Since then every single government has been led by one of the two parties until 2020 when collapsing support for both saw them come together (with the Green Party) to form an historical coalition in order to retain power. The rotating Taoiseach was introduced and they split the ministerial portfolios.

It should be noted that Michéal Martin, the leader of Fianna Fáil, had explicitly ruled out any coalition with Fine Gael before the election but, facing the ignominy of being the first ever Fianna Fáil leader not to become Taoiseach, quickly abandoned his principles. This, as it turned out, set the theme quite well for how this government would operate as it went about pursuing the most extraordinary agenda of wilful malice and abuse of power that the country has ever seen.

In no particular order, the 33rd Dáil has:

• Suspended basic rights and civil liberties by locking down the population and suspending free movement

• Isolated old people in care homes

• Banned people from having funerals, forcing many families to miss a crucial step in the grieving process and support of their families and community

• Closed schools

• Closed churches

• Closed most businesses and the entire construction industry

• Confined people to within 2km of their homes

• Shut down Cancer screenings and other important health services

• Legally forced the entire population down to age 9 to cover their faces

• Jailed an old age pensioner for refusing to do the above

• Banned men from being present at the birth of their children or to support their spouses during childbirth.

• Introduced an experimental and entirely novel vaccination technology which it then coerced and psychologically manipulated the population into taking.

• Signed actual segregation into law by creating a two-tier society where a person’s vaccination status determined their access to many parts of society

• Banned the constitutional right to protest any of these measures

• Oversaw the most prolonged period of excess death in recent memory (from mid 2021 onwards).

• Oversaw the emergence of one of the world’s worst housing crises

• Oversaw a health service that is ranked as one of the lowest in the northern hemisphere despite having one of the very highest spends per capita

• Overpaid on the construction of a children’s hospital by about €2 billion to the point that it is now listed as one of the most expensive buildings in the whole world and is still unbuilt.

• Somehow spent over a quarter of a million euro on an 18 stand bike shed

• Created the highest household electricity prices in the entire world

• Created record homelessness

• Overseen a breakdown in law and order to the point that the Tánaiste and leader of Fianna Fáil himself admitted his own daughter doesn’t feel safe in the city centre.

• Used the State Police to force mass immigration centres into multiple towns and communities throughout the country. (Honestly, listen to this woman describe how the Minister for Integration sent 200 Gardaí and a canine unit to her small town (population 165) which had been peacefully protesting the establishment of a centre that would double the population of the area.)

• Relentlessly pursued a hate speech bill opposed by the majority of the population and which led US Senator and Vice-President elect J.D. Vance to write to the Irish Ambassador expressing his concern over “authoritarian legislation pending in the Irish parliament that would severely undermine freedom of speech in the country.” He went on to say that, “If this were happening in Russia or China or many other nations we would call it totalitarian and threaten economic sanctions.”

It really is an extraordinary collection of crimes and abuses (and I’ve probably forgotten some) but also of gross incompetencies. This mixture of authoritarianism and incompetence is really quite rare. At least with most tyrannies you tend to get some efficiency. Mussolini made the trains run on time and all that. And yet the Irish Reich has managed to combine despotism with an almost inexplicable ineptitude.

Most significant though is that this government chose to interpret individual rights and freedoms not as immutable and untouchable but rather as privileges which are in their gift to bestow or to withdraw. That is a fundamental change in the relationship between the State and its people. No longer are they content to see themselves as our servants, as answerable to the public. They firmly established themselves as our absolute rulers and have acted accordingly and left little recourse to peaceful opposition.

Everything that follows them will be different.

All changed, changed utterly.

-W.B. Yeats, Easter 1916