Irish Examiner view: Parties ought to address rural Ireland in Election 2024 debate
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In the white heat of an election campaign, political parties and their many advisers, consultants, vote-getting gurus, and other specialists agonise about mobilising voters in their favour. In the scramble to get people to the ballot boxes with tantalising promises, often vague idealism, and rampant accusations about the capability of others, it often seems that some sectors get overlooked or undervalued in terms of their worth to individual parties.
As we highlighted in yesterday’s , the farming community, once one of the most potent voices in any election, has been strangely quiet this time as the focus lasers in on housing, the cost of living, and immigration.
Our agriculture sector is still one of this country’s biggest economic drivers, and yet this election has been largely devoid of any debate about the health — or otherwise — of our rural communities and the need for greater resourcing and infrastructure, both physical and human, in places where 37% of the population still live.
There is an undoubted imbalance between rural and urban Ireland and, as the hours count down to election day, it might well earn one of the main party leaders some countryside kudos if the issues facing farming families and those living in large and small provincial towns are addressed in tonight’s televised debate.
It was once a given that the two previously predominant parties — Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael — would automatically garner a large slice of the rural vote, but this is no longer a given and, in many places, Independent candidates rule the ballot boxes.
The larger parties need to address obvious city/country divides if they are to secure the support they once took for granted.
The acrimonious affair that was the UN’s Cop 29 climate change conference in Azerbaijan wrapped up last week with an agreement which, on the face of it, seemed to deliver the necessary impetus to continue the fight to deliver a safer global environment.
And yet the deal, in which wealthy developed nations — and historically the biggest emitters of CO2 — would deliver $300bn (€278.5bn) by 2030 to help poorer nations transition to cleaner energy and adapt to the threat of global warming, offers no guarantees of success.
For a start, the agreement reached in Baku is non-binding and, in any event, falls well short of the financial demands made by some developing nations. The hope is that the money will help boost private investment in order to reach the ambitious target of delivering €1.3 trillion per year by 2035, to help nations that can ill-afford such expenditure.
While the agreement triples the commitment by wealthy nations to help vulnerable ones cope with ever-increasing threats from rising sea levels, increasing temperatures, and any number of environmental disasters, the fact is that the deal comes after a decade in which rich countries struggled to meet a $100bn pledge.
That there were cheers and applause when the Indian delegate to Cop 29 described the new target as “too little, too distant” and labelled the agreement as a document which was little more than “an optical illusion”, it is unsurprising that there is widespread disquiet with the Baku accord.
After three decades of talks, these annual negotiations may have put the planet on a safer trajectory by way of its overall temperature rise, but have failed to meet the goal of keeping warming to 1.5C compared to preindustrial levels.
In an era of frequent and increasingly costly climate disasters, it has to be marked down as disappointing that developed nations are still shirking their responsibilities.
That is especially so when the UN has labelled this financial commitment as an investment and not charity.
With the Trump administration unlikely to commit further money from a country that was historically the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases, and China — the current holder of that unwanted crown — not required to contribute, it appears the developing world will be left to to clean up the mess left by others.
Populist politics has roiled numerous elections across Europe throughout the year and it now looks like another right-wing politician is set to have a significant impact in the coming weeks.
A previously little-known Independent candidate in the Romanian presidential election, Calin Georgescu, took 22% of counted votes on Sunday, sending shockwaves through the country’s political system and setting up a runoff showdown with leftist prime minister Marcel Ciolacu on December 8.
Georgescu’s performance seems to indicate a substantial swing by the Romanian people against mainstream politics and politicians, and signposted yet again widespread dissatisfaction with established norms across Europe.
Despite claims he lacks any agenda other than supporting native farmers, ramping up energy and food production, and reducing the country’s reliance on imports, Georgescu seems to have struck a chord with disaffected voters.
Angered by high inflation, a large budget deficit, an elevated level of emigration, and an economic slowdown, voters appear motivated by a desire for change, and Georgescu is the main political winner as a result.
It is striking that in so many elections across Europe and throughout the world this year, the desire for change is the single biggest factor in voter behaviour. It is something we have seen in Britain, the Netherlands, France, and, to a certain extent, the US, where Donald Trump’s stated aim of “tearing down the establishment” resonated with so many voters.
We will find out ourselves in a few days’ time when Irish voters go to the polls, whether vanilla politics is still a winner with the electorate.
Repeatedly this year and in many distinct parts of the world, conventional norms are being constantly challenged. Romania is simply the latest country to do so.