Dublin Parties’ Irish Unity Deposit Is Really Bid To Out-Spend Sinn Fein!

Dr John Coulter ✍ All this Dublin dosh coming to Northern Ireland is merely the Leinster House establishment trying to buy the next Southern general election in a last ditch bid to outmanoeuvre the growth of Sinn Fein.

Ironically, Sinn Fein should already be in government in Southern Ireland, but the movement made one fatal electoral flaw during the last Dail showdown in 2020 - it didn’t run enough candidates!

No doubt the instructions coming to the party from the republican movement’s ruling Provisional IRA army council will be to ensure it has sufficient candidates on the ballot paper in the hope that enough TDs are elected to give Sinn Fein at least an overall majority in the next Dail general election, expected either later this year, or early in 2025.

Indeed, Sinn Fein was only kept out of power in 2020 because the two rival establishment parties - Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael - set aside their differences and formed an historic coalition pact in the Dail.

Sinn Fein boss Mary Lou McDonald will be hoping she has enough TDs elected to give her party an overall majority - a situation Sinn Fein has not enjoyed electorally since the 1918 Westminster General Election - which will guarantee she becomes Taoiseach.

Plan B would either be to persuade Fianna Fáil to break its pact with Fine Gael and enter a coalition government with Sinn Fein, or persuade enough Independent or Left-wing party TDs to prop up a Sinn Fein-led coalition government.

Sinn Fein was so keen to get the DUP back into Stormont this month, not because the republican movement has had a Biblical-style Road to Damascus political conversion to the existence of Northern Ireland and its partitionist parliament, but because it needs to convince Southern voters that it can become a responsible party of government.

The Sinn Fein back door plan to Irish Unity is to show to Southern voters, especially those who vote Fianna Fáil and particularly first time voters, that it can run a parliament in the hope that those Southern voters return Sinn Fein to power in Leinster House.

The real test of this republican strategy will come later this year in the European elections when Sinn Fein will be standing candidates in the Republic, which for the time being, remains part of the European Union.

The kick starting of Stormont has triggered the British Government’s promised £3.3 billion package with possibly more Westminster cash coming down the pipeline.

Southern voters will be watching Sinn Fein carefully to see how the republican movement spends those billions before definitely opting to give Sinn Fein the reins of power in the Dail.

In a bid to derail Sinn Fein’s spending spree in Northern Ireland, the current Fine Gael/Fianna Fáil administration has embarked on its own spending spree north of the Irish border.

But this could also be a Trojan horse for Sinn Fein, not for Unionism. If Sinn Fein does become a majority government in Dublin, it too, will embark on a massive spending spree in a bid to alleviate the huge lack of social housing in the Republic - a spending spree which could easily bankrupt Southern Ireland, with the so-called Celtic Tiger economy facing a collapse which it endured several years ago.

In this event, there will be no British millions to bail out the Southern economy as happened when the UK was still a key member of the EU.

Five years of Sinn Fein rule in the Republic could well wreck the state financially in the short-term, but it could guarantee long-term that Sinn Fein’s Irish Unity plans would be in the political dustbin for generations to come.

Southern voters may not be so forgiving of Sinn Fein if the party’s high-spending social housing policy results in soaring taxes and an economic wilderness.

It is becoming clear the current Fianna Fáil/Fine Gael spending spree for Northern Ireland is a double-edged political sword - showing how financially generous the present Dail government can be, and spending as much money as possible so that Sinn Fein has a very small budget if its happens to win the next Dail election.

And even if Sinn Fein makes gains in the European elections, its MEPs will be going back to an expected parliament which will have increased representations from both the centre Right and Far Right movements.

A thriving Far Right group of MEPs in the next European Parliamentary mandate will operate a rigid populist agenda, meaning they will keep the EU cash for their own member states rather than give it to the Republic to help with any Sinn Fein needed bail out because the republican movement drastically overspent on providing social housing.

But bluntly, Unionism should not be alarmed by the current Southern establishment spending spree in Northern Ireland. Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael are not trying to buy Irish Unity. In reality, they are setting up Sinn Fein for a financial fall.

The late Rev Ian Paisley, when he was a DUP MEP, said he was going to Europe to milk the European cow. Unionism and Loyalism should milk every penny from the current Southern administration because if Sinn Fein has any say in the next Dail government, as in the 1920s, the republican movement will inevitably spark a second civil war in the South - only this time not with guns and bombs, but with social housing, jobs and the Republic’s Celtic Tiger economy.

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Listen to commentator Dr John Coulter’s programme, Call In Coulter, every Saturday morning around 10.15 am on Belfast’s Christian radio station, Sunshine 1049 FM. Listen online.