Here's the real story of the Irish election: beneath the appearance of calm lies a storm | The Guardian Opinion |

Ireland has, in effect, full employment, an expanded workforce and a booming economy. So why is it such a nation in flux?

They can, after all, claim with a great deal of justification that they have turned what was once one of western Europe's poorest countries into a wealthy society. They have transformed a place of departure, shaped by generations of mass emigration and depopulation, into a place of arrival in which one in five residents were born outside Ireland. They have steered the country through the crises of Brexit and Covid with a competence that was all the more reassuring for the contrast it provided to the anarchic politics across the Irish Sea and the Atlantic. So how come they have received such a lukewarm endorsement?

Usually, the obvious explanation would be the popularity of the main opposition party - in this case Sinn Féin. Two or three years ago, this reasoning would have made sense. Sinn Féin, led by the brilliant campaigner Mary Lou McDonald, was polling at well over 30% and there was a common assumption that it was within striking distance of being able to form the next government with a coalition of leftwing parties.

But the opposite has happened. McDonald did indeed run a very good campaign and her party produced detailed and costed proposals to address two of the outgoing government's biggest failures: a grossly inadequate supply of housing and very uneven access to healthcare. Yet the results of Friday's vote have punctured the narrative of Sinn Féin's inevitable rise to power on both sides of the Irish border. It was actually the biggest loser of the election, its share of the vote shrinking from a quarter to a fifth. The loss is disguised somewhat by the fact that there are more seats in an expanded Dáil this time, but it is nonetheless undeniable.

Why has Sinn Féin gone backwards? Partly because at least some of its support has leached away to rightwing candidates exploiting anti-immigrant sentiment among working-class voters who feel left behind by Ireland's shiny globalised economy. The far right did not make enough gains on Friday to win Dáil seats, but its plethora of would-be tribunes of "the people" did eat into parts of Sinn Féin's traditional ethno-nationalist base.