Election 2024 live: Sinn Féin claim RTÉ not ‘up to scratch’ on Gaza as Greens pledge to tackle school homework

With just over a week and a half left until polling day, the cross-party attacks continued following Sinn Féin’s unveiling of its general election manifesto on Tuesday.
The party’s manifesto promises to spend an extra €56 billion – made up of additional €41.8 billion capital spend and an additional €14.3 billion in current spending – over the next five years.
Sinn Féin denied claims it is planning a €16 billion “piggy bank heist” as Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil rounded on the party’s tax and spending plans.
Mary Lou McDonald has also defended her plans for a review of RTÉ’s coverage of the conflict in the Middle East.
Elsewhere, Sinn Féin spokesperson on Housing, Eoin Ó Broin, has said Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael policies are pouring fuel on the flames of ever-soaring house prices
That’s all from the live blog today. Thank you for tuning in.
General election coverage continues at irishtimes.com.
One of the stories of the general election has been Fine Gael candidate Senator John McGahon.
Footage emerged on Sunday of the assault and the wounds he inflicted on Breen White outside a Dundalk pub in 2018.
Though Mr McGahon was acquitted on a criminal charge, he was held two-thirds liable in a civil action and was ordered to pay the victim €39,000 earlier this year.
Mr McGahon has not spoken since the footage emerged.
Irish Times journalist Colm Keena has been to Dundalk in the search for the elusive candidate.
The National Union of Journalists (NUJ) has expressed “grave concern” regarding Sinn Féin’s manifesto pledge to commission a review of RTÉ’s objectivity in its international coverage, saying the move would set a “dangerous precedent”.
Séamus Dooley, Irish secretary of the NUJ, said he will be writing to Mary Lou McDonald and Sinn Féin’s director of elections Matt Carthy about the proposal.
But the party is not for turning. Sinn Féin TD Louise O’Reilly defended the commitment on Wednesday, saying the national broadcaster has been open to criticism that its coverage of the Middle East was not “up to scratch”.
She said at times the broadcaster has “failed to recognise the scale and the gravity” of what is unfolding in Palestine.
Jack White has the full story.
Irish Times columnist Senator Michael McDowell argues here that neither Fianna Fáil nor Fine Gael want the Greens as a partner if they get back into government.
McDowell argues here that the inclusion of a number of independent TDs might bring a change of direction in the government.
“We need coherent, realistic government – not extravagant promises designed for illusory short-term electoral advantage.
“Ironically, in many constituencies, voters may see centre-of-the-road, Independent candidates as the only candidates not making wildly extravagant and expensive political commitments that all the parties are using to buy votes.”
Responding to the latest Central Statistics Office figures which show a year on year house price to September of 10 per cent nationally, he described the figures as “shocking” but not surprising.
“House prices are now 15 per cent higher than they were during the height of the Celtic Tiger. The reality is that it is Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael’s failure to deliver the necessary supply of affordable homes that is putting home ownership ven further out of reach of ordinary people.
“The knock-on effect of there not being enough new homes to buy is further turbocharging the prices of second-hand homes, which are 11 per cent higher than one year ago.
“The legacy of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael is that they have condemned so many of our young people, and people in their 30s and 40s, to living in their parents’ box rooms or to feeling they have no other choice but to leave for Canada, the US, New Zealand or Australia.
“Only a Sinn Féin government with Sinn Féin’s housing plan can bring affordable home ownership back into the reach of working people, while reducing council waiting lists and ending homelessness.”
Sinn Féin’s manifesto calls for the building of 125,000 new public homes by 2029.
Of these almost 75,000 would be social housing, 25,000 would be for affordable rent and 25,00 would be for affordable purchase.
The party says it is committed to 300,000 new homes between 2025 and 2029.
The outcome of the US general election will potentially have a big impact on whoever gets into government the next time around.
Here Hugh Linehan discusses with Cliff Taylor of The Irish Times, University of Galway Professor of Economics John McHale and Tasc director Shana Cohen the potential dangers to Ireland from president-elect Donald Trump’s plans to penalise American companies that warehouse their profits in countries like Ireland. What could a Trump presidency mean for our foreign direct investment (FDI) model.
There was a time when the view of the Roman Catholic Bishops of Ireland would have played a big role in any general election but the political power of the crosier has diminished dramatically over recent decades. They still have a view on what should happen mind you and it landed this afternoon broken into eight top lines, If it weren’t for the last of these points you might think it came from a more traditionally left leaning and liberal source.
Tánaiste Micheál Martin has attacked Sinn Féin’s finance plans as “dangerous stuff” and claimed “there’s a €3.5 billion tax hike in the Sinn Féin manifesto that will destroy enterprise, that will destroy the foreign direct investment base in this country”, reports Marie O’Halloran.
He also claimed Sinn Féin are not going to continue the two ‘rainy day’ long-term investment funds the Government established earlier this year, the Future Ireland Fund (FIF) and the Infrastructure, Climate and Nature Fund (ICNF).
Finance spokesman Pearse Doherty has insisted the party will keep the €16 billion funds and would have a surplus of €31 billion in them over the next five years.
The Tánaiste said however that Sinn Féin’s was a “high risk strategy of just budgeting for a €1 billion surplus from 2026 to 2027″.
“Any shock at all that comes our way there is nothing in there – no headroom for manoeuvre. This is dangerous stuff in terms of claims in their fiscal framework.”
He claimed Sinn Féin will invest €1 billion the first year and over €2 billion the following year. But by law “we would be putting in €6 billion per annum over the next two years. That’s a big, big difference, and I think that creates problem for pensions into the future.”
I’m sorry but what is happening here? Answers on a postcard or via @conor_pope on the platform formerly known as Twitter.
Housing is one of the big stories of the election and this piece from Eoin Burke Kennedy is likely to be a key talking point in the days ahead.
House prices in the Republic are continuing to grow at double-digit rates as supply shortages, Government incentives to buy, and expectations of further interest rate cuts fuel demand.
The latest official figures indicate prices rose nationally at an annual rate of 10 per cent in the year to September, down marginally on the 10.1 per cent recorded in August.
Nonetheless it was still close to the highest rate of inflation seen in the Irish market in almost three years.
On a monthly basis, prices were up 0.9 per cent. In Dublin, the level of growth remained at 10.8 per cent year-on-year.
The Ukrainian embassy in Dublin has hit out at a call in Sinn Féin’s manifesto for countries to stop supplying weapons to Ukraine, reports Pat Leahy.
In a statement on Twitter, the embassy said it was “disturbed by the irresponsible call to stop supplying weapons to Ukraine.
“These weapons allow us to defend [the] Ukrainian people & the global int. rules based security system. Lack of military aid will increase mass killings of Ukrainians and will have catastrophic consequences for the world.”
In its manifesto Sinn Féin said that it condemned Russia’s war in Ukraine but went on to say:
“Ukraine, Russia, the United States and the EU should play a role in bringing this conflict to an end by putting the interest of the people of the region above other geopolitical interests. All sides must cease the current unlimited supply of weapons into Ukraine which has cost hundreds of thousands of lives.”
Just in from Harry McGee: US president-elect Donald Trump’s nomination of Howard Lutnick as head of the US Commerce Department will pose a challenge for Ireland and underpins the need to keep finances in surplus in the years ahead, Fine Gael’s Paschal Donohoe has said.
Lutnick is a Wall Street veteran and chief executive of the global financial brokerage Cantor Fitzgerald. In recent months he has been outspoken about US multinational companies not paying taxes in the United States but elsewhere, including Ireland.
“It’s nonsense that Ireland of all places runs a trade surplus at our expense,” he said last month in a post on X.
Mr Donohoe, Minister for Public Expenditure, was speaking at the launch of a Fine Gael campaign alongside Minister for Enterprise Peter Burke.
Asked if appointment of Mr Lutnick posed a risk to the Irish economy, he said: “I think there’s many developments taking place at the moment that do pose a challenge to the consensus in relation to global trade and taxation.
“I wouldn’t pick out any one individual, but I think it’s obvious to all of us that the consensus in relation to how tax and trade has been managed within the global economy is changing.
“If you’re a small, open economy like we are, that of itself poses a real challenge to us. It’s the reason why budget after budget, we have moved our public finances into the level of surplus that they are.”
Marie O’Halloran has picked up a few different strands from FF disability launch.
The Tánaiste has warned that the handling of migration in Britain led to Brexit.
He was responding to question about EU proposals to set up holding pens for migrants being assessed.
He also had a go at the Sinn Feing manifesto and said the party had a €3.5 billion tax hike that will destroy enterprise and destroy foreign direct investment. It’s “dangerous stuff”.
He also criticised Sinn Féin’s plan for a review of RTÉ which he said was “shocking”.
Phasing out homework for primary schoolchildren is among the Green Party’s election promises with party leader Roderic O’Gorman saying it would ease pressure on children and parents, writes Cormac McQuinn.
He was speaking as he launched his party’s “Children’s Charter” aimed at supporting parents, improving public services for families and protecting vulnerable children.
The Green Party is pledging to bring down childcare costs to €200 per month.
Mr O’Gorman, the minister for children argued that the ability for all parties to be promising this is based on his work in the area of childcare over the last four years.
He claimed credit for the last Government’s cutting of childcare fees by 50 per cent saying: “It wasn’t easy. No one else was rolling in behind me.”
Mr O’Gorman said a key challenge now is capacity and his party has called for a legal right to the two free years of preschool which he said will place an obligation on government to deliver more child care places.
The Green Party wants a public model of childcare to bring services to places where there isn’t capacity at present.
Harry McGee has this report: A furious row is brewing between Sinn Féin and Fine Gael over a new attack ad by the latter that claims that the Opposition party will essentially raid the ‘rainy day’ funds and put the stability of the economy at risk.
Sinn Féin has reacted furiously to the allegation, particularly the suggestion that it will use the €16 billion for day-to-day spending.
This morning Fine Gael unveiled the first direct attack ad of the campaign on Merrion Square with a short video that showed a piggy bank being smashed and a number of hands grabbing the money inside it. The captions referred to the €16 billion in the two sovereign funds as well as Fine Gael’s commitment to increase it to €40 billion by 2030.
“Sinn Féin can’t be trusted,” reads a caption.
“Sinn Féin would raid our public finances,” says the next.
Pearse Doherty, Sinn Féin’s finance spokesman, has reacted furiously saying the claims by Fine Gael were “blatant lies” and “false information.”
“We published a manifesto yesterday. It is clear that only do we not use €16 billion but actually we will have a surplus in the next five years of €15 billion which will go into the funds to bring it up to €31 billion.”
He claims Fine Gael is deliberately putting out misinformation and borrowing from the playbook “on the other side of the Atlantic.”
Marie O’Halloran reports from the launch of Fianna Fáil’s election pledges on disability:
Fianna Fáil will establish a new directorate in the Department of Health “to co-ordinate activity across government and drive forward implementation of the plan that we are launching today”, Tánaiste Micheál Martin has said at the launch of the party’s plan to support people with disabilities.
“This is a serious plan for serious reform” in a sector where too many people “are not getting the quality of support they deserve”.
The plan will increase third level training places for speech and language and occupational therapy students as part of its plan to support people with disabilities. It will also increase investment in adult day services to €27 million a year as part of its plan to support people with a disability. The party promises to put the disability support grant on a permanent footing and increase it incrementally to €1,000 a year.
It’s election pledges also include extending the Aim (Access and Inclusion Model) programme supports to all children with a disability up to three years of age in childcare, similar to existing provisions for three to Six-year-olds.
Eamon Ryan is in Baku for COP29, where an international assessment of Ireland’s response to climate change has backed the case for a moratorium on data centres. Read environment editor Kevin O’Sullivan’s report here.
Kevin was also talking to outgoing Minister for the Environment Eamon Ryan, who had this election-tinged take to share:
If you want to know how Gerard Hutch got his nickname and what it has to do with our own Harry McGee, take a listen to Election Daily:
Prime Time was in Kilkenny last night for a debate between candidates in the region.
The Tonight Show on Virgin Media held a debate on childcare last night – here’s how they teed up the section. More clips of the political contributions are available on their X account.
Friends of the Earth Ireland is hosting climate hustings in Dublin today – if you’re so inclined, proceedings can be followed live here:
Top notch election trail swag being distributed by Danny Healy-Rae in Kerry. Although a Danny-branded Nokia 5110 would be the ultimate prize.
Ruh roh. The Americans have spotted us again.
That icy finger of dread on the shoulder of Ireland inc isn’t just this morning’s frost – Donald Trump’s pick for secretary of commerce also looks like he might have a chilling effect. Here’s what he thinks of Ireland and Apple – expect this to be a feature on the campaign trail today.
Read more of our coverage here