Right-wing politics in Ireland today is a loose mix of small parties, protest groups, online activists and loudmouths who claim they’re standing up for “ordinary Irish people”. You’ll hear the same lines over and over: Ireland is full, migrants are to blame, elites don’t listen, the nation is under threat. It all sounds fierce and radical, like someone’s finally saying what people are thinking. But once you strip away the shouting and the flags, there’s very little there for working-class communities trying to survive in neoliberal Ireland.
From a traditional revolutionary point of view, politics is meant to be about power, housing, work, dignity and control over our own lives. On those basics, the Irish right wing comes up empty.
Take housing, the biggest crisis in working-class Dublin and across the country. Rents through the roof, families stuck in childhood bedrooms, homelessness becoming normalised. What have these groups actually done? They haven’t built a single house. They haven’t organised tenants. They haven’t fought vulture funds, land hoarders or developers. They haven’t pushed councils to compulsorily purchase land or expand public housing at scale.
All they offer is blame. Refugees. Migrants. Anyone weaker than the people actually making money off the crisis. That doesn’t house a single family. It doesn’t lower a single rent. It just divides neighbours against each other while landlords and speculators laugh all the way to the bank.
On workers’ rights, it’s the same story. Big talk about “hard-working Irish people” but no support for trade unions, collective bargaining, sick pay, job security or protections against exploitation. In fact, many of these groups openly sneer at unions as left-wing or foreign. So what exactly are workers meant to do? Clap ourselves into dignity? Real power for working people has always come from our communities through revolutionary organisation, not from shouting at the wrong targets.
The cost-of-living crisis hits hardest where wages are lowest, and housing is least secure. Energy bills, childcare, transport, food. Again, no serious proposals. No plans to cap rents properly. No mass public housing programme. No challenge to corporate profiteering. Just culture war noise and conspiracy talk. It’s politics without solutions, anger without direction.
And here’s the quiet truth that doesn’t get said enough: these groups help Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael stay in power. They split the vote in working-class areas. They pull people away from class-based politics and into sectarian identity traps. Instead of building a united front against landlords, developers and corporate power, they fracture communities along lines of race and nationality. The result is the continuation of the same two parties, year after year, with the same failed housing and economic policies, while pretending there’s no alternative.
Outside of rallies, protests and social media rows, what’s left behind? No community centres. No housing co-ops. No advice clinics. No long-term organising. No legacy. Just burnt-out anger and more disillusionment. People are right to be furious about the state of the country. They’re right to feel abandoned. But being angry isn’t enough. Anger has to be turned into power, and power has to be organised.
Irish republicanism, at its best, was about taking control of our future, not scapegoating the powerless. Socialism is about making sure everyone has a home, a job with dignity, and a life worth living. The far right offers none of that. It offers identity instead of solidarity, blame instead of solutions, and noise instead of change.
Working-class Ireland doesn’t need more division. We need houses built, rents slashed, wages raised, and communities strengthened. At some point, we have to be honest with ourselves and with each other. These right-wing hate parties have nothing positive to offer our communities. No homes, no jobs, no security, no future. All they bring is division, suspicion and neighbour set against neighbour.
That kind of politics weakens us and keeps the real power exactly where it is. Working-class people don’t win by tearing each other apart; we win by standing together. Now more than ever, we need unity, solidarity and a politics that fights for housing, workers’ rights and dignity for all. It’s time to walk away from the dead ends of hate and build something better together.
⏩Pádraig Drummond is an anti-racism activist.
⏩Pádraig Drummond is an anti-racism activist.
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