New TDs arrived at Leinster House brimming with excitement and naming the housing crisis, public services and the war in Gaza as the issues they expect to dominate the Dáil term.
One new Fianna Fáil TD said the next government “will live or die” on its response to the housing and homelessness crisis.
An opposition TD said the enactment of the Occupied Territories Bill should be first on the coalition’s agenda and US President Donald Trump would “overshadow” Irish politics.
Before the first Dáil convened on Wednesday morning, TDs posed with their families at Leinster House.
“It’s very exciting to be here with my family and to follow in my father’s footsteps,” Grace Boland, a new TD for Dublin Fingal-West, said.
“Of course, the work starts. I look at my seven-year-old twin girls and I realise we need good people in politics, we need people who have commercial experience who have life experience, who understand the juggle, the struggle, childcare, access to healthcare, education, special education, and these are all the reasons why I ran.”
Asked whether her father, the late John Boland – a former Fine Gael TD who served as a minister in several departments – had words of wisdom that come to her, she said: “He had a poster on his wall that said ‘it’s nice to be important, but more important to be nice’ and I think those are words to live by.”
Fianna Fáil TD for Roscommon-Galway Martin Daly, a GP, said he came to Leinster House two weeks ago to get settled in.
“Certainly it is a change of atmosphere and it is outside of my own experience previously, but you settle in fairly quickly. I’m very excited now to sit in the Dáil for the first time,” he said.
Asked about the issues that would dominate the term, he said: “I think this next government will live or die on how it handles the housing crisis.
“It is the one single biggest friction point in this country at the moment. It’s hampering our ability to grow as an economy, it’s hampering our ability to retain our young people in this country, it’s a friction point not just for our young people but also for our ability to absorb immigrants both legal and people who are seeking protection under international law.
“Really we need to be more radical, yes we’ve turned the ship, yes there’s a momentum which begun with the last government in terms of delivering capacity in the housing sector, but we actually need to be more radical.”
Limerick City TD for Labour Conor Sheehan said that Donald Trump becoming the next US President would “overshadow” Irish politics.
He said: “We have to see, does Donald Trump essentially decide to start a trade war with us?”
“We’re so dependent as an island economy on foreign direct investment so we just have to make sure that one, we have a stable government and that two, we have security in the public finances to weather the storms economically.”
He said that housing and public services would be the dominant domestic issues, but that enacting the Occupied Territories Bill “should be” the first thing on the next government’s to-do list.
Ruth Coppinger, who arrived at Leinster House wearing a keffiyeh, said that the Irish government’s gestures had been symbolic to date and that direct action was needed.
The People Before Profit-Solidarity TD for Dublin West, who lost her seat in the 2020 general election, said that housing remains the biggest domestic issue.
“The obvious one is affordable housing, it was the biggest issue when I left, and it’s still the big issue now. It was very obviously an all-encompassing issue across the constituency.
“I think the other very big issue is disability and autism, disabled people have put themselves on the political agenda in Ireland this year like never before.
“Defeating the care referendum, defeating the Green paper, and parents in my own area and other areas demanding school places and rights for their children, so I think that’s going to be a very important issue, as well as the rise of the far right, Palestine and racism.”
