Live95 Limerick Today Podcasts

Ivan Yates makes prediction for Limerick in election

Ivan Yates joins Joe to discuss his new live podcast tour, Path to Power and weighs in on the possibility of a future election.

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Duration:: 12m
Broadcast on:: 06 Sep 2024
Audio Format:: mp3

If politics is showbiz for ugly people, then who better than Matt Cooper and Ivan Yates to entertain you on an evening out. Believe it or not, that's the PR selling a podcast live tour. Broadcasters Ivan Yates and Matt Cooper are taking their path to power podcast before audiences. The nearest stop to Limerick is the Cork Opera House on the 13th of this month and Ivan Yates is with us now. Good morning to you Ivan. Good to talk to you again, Joe. How are you? I'm good. Thank you very much. And you're going into, I'd say, your favorite period or just run up to an election really close to one now, probably November, do you think? Yeah, I think after the budget, all the thinkings are happening with the parliamentary parties. A door goes back on the 18th budget on the 1st of October. I would expect that the door will be dissolved sometime between the 1st and 10th of October, possibly around the 8th, 9th. Then you have two choices, a 21-day campaign by law or 28-day campaign, which gives you a polling day, in my opinion, sometime between the 1st to be held on a Friday. The 1st, 8th or 15th of November is the most likely date. And that avoids the bank holiday as well, doesn't it at the end of October? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so the last time, Joe, Leo went to the park on the 14th of January. We didn't have a government until the 14th of June, and we only had a government because the COVID emergency legislation, and they couldn't get it enacted in the channad until the T-Shick's 11 was appointed. So it may still be the case that the caretaker, T-Shick, Simon Harris, gets to go to Washington on Patrick's Day. We shall see, but we will have, I think, an election result by the 1st of December. Now, locally, I mean, and this is happening around the country, as you well know, the news is all around selection conventions, who's getting picked, gender, balance, and indeed, you know, two interesting constituencies in Limerick. Yes, very interesting constituencies. Yeah. Finnegano set a deadline of the 22nd of September to complete the conventions. Of course, in a lot of these cases, they select one, add one, select two, add one. So it gives headquarters still a lot of power, but there is no doubt in the 43 constituencies for an enlarged all of 174 seats. The runners and riders are taking shape. We have the last 2020 results, which are a long time ago with the local election results, and we have various movers and shakers. So I actually think that the Limerick County III seizure is one of the most predictable in the country. I don't see anything but Richard O'Donoghue, Niall Collins, and Patrick O'Donoghue and being re-elected, the fourth, the last time, was in vain, mightn't be such a good day for them. Their vote halved between the general election and the local election, but there'll be one left-wing candidate, but at the end of the day, I think, along with South Tipperary is one of the most predictable in the country. Limerick City is a lot more fascinating. We have the results of the mayoralty as well as the local elections, but as you know, Joe, the mayoralty went city and county. So some people who did well with a count vote who were standing in the city, I'm thinking of Frankie Daly, I'm thinking D. Ryan, I'm thinking of different people, but my current read, and we'll be discussing all this in the Cork Opera House on Friday the 13th, and if there were any political unrest, we'd like to get on the end with the end 22 and head over. There are tickets available at Cork Opera House.ie, but just to finish out, my feeling is the three of the four seats are likely to go to Willio G., Marzcoon, Livin and Karen O'Donnell. With the last seat, quite hard to read. If you ask me now to finish two into one, I would say it would be between D. Ryan, who I think, whether of which has a long-term political career, if she wasn't a TD, I think they were trying to point her as senator, so I think she's in for the long haul as a Limerick politician of the future, as a succession plan for Willio G., and the candidate that sort of rear my head, and I'd be open on this, I'd take your advice and everyone's advice, is Councillor Connor Sheehan of the Labour Party. But there is a number of into and other candidates, I could see Marzcoon, Livin' been down a bit, and I think it's very close to call between those two for the last seat. The critical factor will be, will Willio D. share his vote? Since 1982, he's now in his 70s, he has been one of the most prolific vote gutters in the country. But the problem for Fina Fall is, will he get too many votes? Can he manage and share his vote? Can he give some to D, and can they have them both, because they'd have a right chance if they had level pegging to get the last two seats? Right, and then the national picture, Sinn Fein are having a difficult time in opinion polls at the moment, but as politicians always say, the only opinion poll that matters is Election Day, and when you have different battles and different constituencies and you have a national campaign as well, how do you think that will pan out? Well, a couple of things there. On both the Olympia, on the Wednesday night and Corcorpras, I will be rounding up with my best guess of the scores on the doors of the 174, and what the shape of the next government will be. Look, it's Fina Fall, Finnegal, Sinn Fein, and the independence, which subdivide into three different groups, regional, rural, and independent, independent, and independent, Ireland, as a separate political party. What you're looking at, I find it hard to find the combined total of FGNFF going much beyond 80. The magic figure is 88, but you really need 93 or 4 as a coalition to have a stable government. So that's all to play for on Sinn Fein. They launched their housing policy last week. They're doing a leaflet drop in every house in Ireland for that. Housing will be the policy battleground of the election. I think they'll do better than the local elections, just alone on the incumbency rule. There are only 78, nine counselors going into the election. They have 37 TDs, most of which are looking to get reelected. So I put it like this. I still see Sinn Fein as a live player. They got half of the vote, 12% in the locals versus 24 and a half percent, the most votes in the last year election left. Even though they got 37 seats, they left two seats behind them, in some constituencies, Dublin, South Central, Waterford, they actually had enough votes for two seats. They got nearly two quotas. So all of that, even if it's back a bit, they're still in the hunt for second seats with those constituencies. So Sinn Fein are definitely a player. I don't think there'd be enough for them to lead a government with other left-wing parties, but I think we are facing a very... Like back in the day with Bertie, he was getting over 40% of the vote. And to Kenny in 2011 got 36% of the vote. The best we're looking at for our Finneh Galerfina fall now is 23, 24%. So Irish politics is very fragmented. The other point I would make finally, Joe, is that the turnout in the local elections, not to predicate everything on that, was a 50%. The general election is likely to be about 65%. Those missing 15% are young people, working-class people who are apathetic about the local and European elections. They'll turn out for a general election. They're less likely to vote for the center parties, so therefore that makes it even more predictable. And finally, a lot of people now only make up their minds in the last week, and we'll see the same in America. So it is all to play for. So basically, if you're a political anorek, get your sorry ass into the last few seats in Cork Opera House on Friday week or in the Olympia on Wednesday, and we have a bitter crack as well as a lot of politics. Absolutely. And now even on the point of having a directly elected mayor here in Limerick, we had a lot of debates in this very studio, I'm sitting in the run-up to it, and a big part of it was centralization of power in Dublin versus a counter poll in Limerick and Cork and all of that. You know, from within government, what the thinking is, I know it's a little bit back, but you've continued to observe it, what's really going on? Does Dublin not want to release power to the rest of the country? Look, Joe, the truth of this is that there is a political and administrative appetite for balanced regional development, and Limerick is one of the best bets of that outside of Dublin over the other regional cities. The issue is you go talk to the tech giants, you go talk to the market, employers, they want to go to Dublin, they want to be at Dublin Airport, and so, you know, what you're trying to do with that is politically and through public policy to reshape what the market wants. It's the very same in London versus the rest of England, the very same in France and so on. The fact of the matter is that big cities are getting bigger and they're spreading out, and I think that is a sort of economic gravity that is the biggest issue. It's not that there's some bloody-minded secretary general of the department who doesn't want to go to Limerick. I think everyone is very positive about Limerick, so I think the first thing you need to do is entice the people who create the jobs, and then the people will follow. And one other point then on American politics, because when your live performance of the Path to Power podcast happens in Cork, it'll be after the first debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. Both of them will cover that because it'll be the first debate on the 10th. So at the moment, the Z-wing states, you know, with all the blue states, all the red states, I think it's still Trump's to lose. I think because people find Trump's obnoxious or in denial about how electable he is, but the big lesson for Ireland is if Trump wins, he will cut corporation tax to the prevailing rate in Ireland, which is now going to yield 28 billion this year. He'll cut it from 21 to 15. The Democrats will raise it to 28 again. It's in Ireland's interest that the Democrats get in. Right, because this is the point I'm wondering about, you know, we here at the government here, particularly in the run up to each budget and we're expecting a giveaway budget for an election this time, but they will constantly say, oh, don't take any notice now of how much money we're getting in corporation tax. This could all disappear overnight. And a lot of people look at it and go, well, it hasn't disappeared yet. Well, I can tell you on the tech side, if the data centers don't get built, their long term 10-year plans won't be in Ireland. Last week at Google was refused planning permission for a data center at the Grange Business Park, the first sign of flashing amber lights of trouble ahead. Joe, I've got to go. All right. Talk to you. Great. Good man. Thank you very much for talking to us. That's Ivan Yates there. The path to power podcast with Matt Cooper. It's coming live and the nearest stop to Limerick is the Cork Opera House on the 13th of September. (upbeat music) [Music]