Why the rise of Sinn Féin is our own Donald Trump moment

NOBODY saw Trump coming; nobody saw Brexit coming; nobody saw Sinn Féin coming. Shell-shocked media, like headless chickens, don’t know what happened, what to do or where to go.

Election 2020 is Ireland’s Donald Trump moment, its Brexit shockhorror decision, its moment of revolt against those who serve only the establishment.

The little guys have risen and rebelled: they are not going to continue electing conventional establishment government to bend the knee to multinationals and vulture funds, while ‘lowly’ Irish languish and die on hospital trolleys, or while many, unable to buy a home, pay rack rents to cuckoo funds or commute for hours to contracted jobs with very little security, entitlements or pension rights.

PADRAIC NEARY, Tubbercurry, Co. Sligo.

Did we make a mistake?

THE young people of Ireland have rejected Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil and opted for change with Sinn Féin and the Greens.

The mismanagement by Fine Gael in macro and micro economics increased our national debt by paying subsidiary bondholders and showed incompetence in contract negotiations in the children’s hospital and broadband.

However, replacing Fine Gael economics with Sinn Féin dreamland taxation policy of increased corporation tax and a wealth tax is Corbyn-esque, and if legislated could see both the wealthy and multinationals leaving, meaning less taxation revenue and all future plans out of the windows.

However, economics is not their worst failing, as their mantra for a 32-county Ireland ignores the billions paid annually by Britain to Northern Ireland, the complexity of writing a new constitution, and the certainty of bomb attacks by militants in Dublin, Cork and Galway

The Greens want less use of fossil fuels, less eating beef and dairy products, and carbon taxation, as well as rejecting nuclear power and wanting more dependence on wind farms. They are so obsessed with the future and climate change that jobs, a family life and living from day to day is unimportant.

Young people opted for change, and Sinn Féin and the Greens will give that, but Sinn Féin is locked into the past, obsessed by a united Ireland, as are the Greens with future dangers to Planet Earth. In such a future, the young voters may well look back at 2020 and think Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil’s policies were not too bad. JOHN P. KELLY, Clontarf, Dublin.

Now save Moore Street!

THE seismic change in Ireland’s political landscape signals an even more dramatic moment in the ongoing campaign to save Moore Street from the developers’ wrecking ball.

For years past 1916 Relatives have called for State intervention to save this last extant 1916 battleground from demolition. An advisory group to the Minister for

Arts and Heritage has produced two reports that recommend the area be developed as a 1916 Historic Cultural Quarter with its streets and laneways intact so citizens and visitors can walk in the very footsteps of the men and women of 1916. Despite this, the area continues to deteriorate before our very eyes.

Sinn Féin, in a very welcome development, included the preservation of the area as a national monument in its election manifesto, making it the first party to do so. Fianna Fáil has in the past prepared and presented bills in support of the campaign to both Houses of the Oireachtas.

An opportunity now arises once again for decisive action on the part of a new administration to act on their responsibility and protect and preserve this ‘cradle of liberty’ for future generations by whatever means are necessary. It should not be missed. JAMES CONNOLLY HERON, The 1916 Relatives Alliance,

Ranelagh, Dublin 6.