The Soc Dems at 10
Ten years old this week, Ireland’s Social Democrats have been written off countless times by political commentators. But, bigger than ever, they now have the opportunity to lead a real alternative
Dermot Looney was a Councillor on South Dublin County Council from 2009-2019 and joined the Social Democrats in 2017. He has since assisted various Social Democrats’ election campaigns and committees. This article is written in a personal capacity.
Never mind a week. In politics, a decade is a very long time indeed. The Irish political system of 2015 was, on the surface at least, a world away from the situation today. The two sides of the Fine Gael/Labour government, formed in the heat of the 2011 general election, were experiencing contrasting fortunes. Fine Gael, who had seen a slump in support in the wake of austerity measures for the first three years of government, were beginning to rally in the polls. Labour, on the other hand, were sinking fast. They had won an historic 37 seats in 2011 but, seen as a mudguard for their conservative partners in government and blamed for the worst of the austerity policies, they were to lose all but seven of them in the 2016 general election.
Into the vacuum created by Fianna Fáil’s continued unpopularity, Labour’s demise and a lack of major momentum behind Sinn Féin came a variety of political projects during 2015, all with an eye to the February 2016 generals. Many of these names are now lost to political history.
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Renua launched in March 2015. Originally initiated under the working title ‘Reboot Ireland,’ they won significant publicity due to their high-profile TDs, including leader Lucinda Creighton. Of all the groupings which began in 2015, they had the highest number of parliamentarians, the more prominent media supporters and, arguably, the best press. Renua quickly became associated with an anti-abortion stance, as well as a variety of right-wing economic positions such as advocating for a flat tax. It fielded 26 candidates in 2016 but lost all its seats. State funding kept the party on life support until it faded into obscurity and attempted a rebrand in 2023 as “the Centre Party of Ireland.”
The Independent Alliance formed in the same month. It was not a party but a grouping of ideologically-disparate independent TDs and Senators including Shane Ross, Finian McGrath and Michael Fitzmaurice. They fared better than Renua at the polls, electing six TDs in 2016. Most of its members supported the minority Fine Gael administration, with Ross becoming a Minister. The Alliance, such as it was, ceased to exist by 2020.
2015 also saw distinctly left-wing attempts to organise new political groupings, if not parties as such. The rebranding of ‘Independents for Equality” to “Independents 4 Change” came in October and saw four TDs elected in 2016 – Clare Daly, Tommy Broughan, Joan Collins and Mick Wallace. By 2020, though, this grouping had also collapsed.
2015 also saw People Before Profit and the Anti Austerity Alliance combine in an electoral pact, although it was hardly a brand new organisation; it was a resurrection of the 2011 United Left Alliance, and both organisations retain strong connections to older organisations such as the Socialist Party and the Socialist Workers’ Network.
Perhaps the most ambitious project of the year was the broader ‘Right2Change’ programme which had arisen out of the anti-water charges protests; the left-wing platform signed up to by, among others, Sinn Féin and People Before Profit. The union-backed programme did not last long past 2016.
Of all the 2015 creations, only one remains standing and, it could be argued, thriving: the Social Democrats. But it was an inauspicious beginning and a difficult infancy for the new party.
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Launched on July 15th 2015, the three founding Social Democrats TDs were well-known. Catherine Murphy had been an Independent public representative since 2003, having previously travelled the same Workers’ Party/Democratic Left/Labour Party route as then-Tánaiste Eamon Gilmore and several other notable politicians. Stephen Donnelly had been elected as an Independent TD for Wicklow in 2011 and had won praise for his contributions on the banking crisis and other economic issues. Róisín Shortall had been a staunch Labour Party TD since 1992 and was appointed a Minister of State for Health in 2011. But barely 18 months into the government’s term, she resigned both the Junior Ministership and the Labour Party whip, having failed to receive the party leadership’s support for her stance against the actions of senior FG Minister James Reilly.
The Social Democrats were launched with a commitment to what they called a Nordic model of social democracy, noting the party would seek to abolish water charges, introduce a new public childcare system, repeal the 8th Amendment and prioritise public spending over tax cuts. There were high hopes of recruiting a swathe of new candidates for the general election which would take place seven months later. But by the time it came around, only 14 of the 40 constituencies were contested, with a number of these little more than token efforts. The three ‘co-leaders’ were re-elected, each topping the poll, but there were no gains. Only Gary Gannon, then a Dublin City Councillor, came close to adding to the seat total.
There were other teething problems for the new party. ‘Social democracy’ seemed to mean different things to different people, and a minority of early members and candidates were closer to the centre than the centre-left outlook of the majority. Few of them stayed around. There were squabbles around branches and internal committees, as would be expected in any new political organisation. The departure of Stephen Donnelly in September 2016, hailed as a ‘major blow’ for the party, might have finished off the organisation entirely.
At this point the party had just two TDs, three Councillors (Jennifer Whitmore, Cian O’Callaghan and Gary Gannon), and an active membership in the low three figures. A Social Democrats thread on the politics.ie forum that autumn saw posts that summed up the prevailing mood in Irish politics at the time. “Every time I see this thread bumped I expect the news that the party has finally disbanded,” wrote one poster. “Rest in peace social democrats,” wrote another.
Donnelly later told the Harvard Kennedy Business School that the entire affair “was a disaster.”
“I had hoped to create something fresh, outward-looking, and brave, but it quickly became the opposite,” he claimed. He joined Fianna Fáil within months, became Minister for Health in 2020, and lost his seat in 2024.
But rather than his departure marking the end of the road for another doomed political project, Donnelly’s exit was ultimately the party’s saving grace. His politics were never trusted by Murphy and Shortall, who spurned his attempts to commandeer the project. Both women were firmly rooted in left-of-centre traditions, while his political philosophy, while liberal, was always more nebulous. As well as the obvious ideological differences, he had become disengaged from the ‘drudgery’ of establishing an entirely new political entity, with its internal squabbles, conferences, constitutions and executives.
While a couple of ex-candidates left in the wake of Donnelly’s exit, the SocDems’ fortunes began to shift in 2017. Four Councillors joined the party between March 2017 and February 2018. It was hardly a groundswell of support, but by now the party’s structures were embedded, policies were being launched, and there was significant recognition for the parliamentary work of Shortall and Murphy.
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I was one of the Councillors who joined. I would never have done so had Stephen Donnelly remained involved, and some others joining around the same time have said similar. I had been elected to South Dublin County Council for the Labour Party in 2009 but left that party having failed to have any impact on the direction of the FG/Labour government. I was re-elected as a left-wing Independent in 2014. By 2017 I had decided that my second five-year term would be my last. But I was encouraged to join the SocDems with a view to adding some political experience to their ranks. That I was just 34 years of age spoke more to the party’s naivety than anything special I had to offer.
The organisation was even more raw and inexperienced than I’d expected. There were issues around staffing and many of the volunteer executive and committee members lacked even rudimentary electoral experience. But there were a few shining lights who had the wherewithal and political nous to carry the project forward. There was a fundamental decency and a lack of cynicism among the members. And, having been involved in political, trade union and local organisations for many years, I saw something I’d never seen before; meetings where women were in the majority. The lack of experience also meant for new ideas and focuses which struggled to gain ground in establishment parties, such as decidedly pro-choice politics, a genuine emphasis on democratic accountability, and the continued focus on funding for public services over tax cuts.
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From the outside, there seemed to have been little improvement in the SocDems’ standing during 2018 and 2019. Opinion polling saw the party fall in the 1-3% range, with numerous polls recording the party at 0%. The 2019 local and European elections gave the party its second electoral test. A combination of weak finances and poor party organisation meant that only one candidate ran for the European parliament, Gary Gannon, who finished a creditable sixth in the 4-seat Dublin constituency. But despite a somewhat chaotic campaign, the party, which entered the election with six outgoing Cllrs, more than trebled its seats on local authorities to 19.
The seat total was still far behind rival parties such as the resurgent Green Party (49) and Labour (57). The latter, although still bruised by their recent electoral batterings, made various overtures in the press towards what they termed a ‘merger’ – in essence, Social Democrats members joining the Labour Party. They were all rejected. The Social Democrats’ local authority presence was mainly limited to strongholds like Dublin and Kildare; they had just two Council seats in the whole of Munster, one in Connacht, and none in Ulster. Its candidates flopped in the three by-elections contested in late November 2019, with a number of commentators writing off any future at all for the party. “SocDems on political life support after today,” tweeted political columnist Larry Donnelly. “Two very strong TDs. Otherwise, the gig appears to be up.” He was far from alone in his outlook.
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Entering the party’s tiny Head Office on South Frederick Street a few weeks later, I was similarly downbeat. I had just been appointed the Social Democrats’ National Director of Elections for the imminent 2020 general election. The entirety of the party’s staff was reduced to two; a General Secretary and an administrator. There was no national organiser, no policy director, no communications director, and very little money with which to contest the election. The election manifesto was far from ready, and the first poll of the campaign put the Social Democrats at 1%.
But there was at least a semblance of strategy beneath the chaos. Rather than spread itself too thinly, the party focused on contesting in about 20 constituencies, eschewing the ‘paper candidates’ strategies others used to up their national vote percentage. The few euro available was prioritised for winnable seats with strong local candidates and small but dedicated electoral teams. The membership revelled in the history-making slate of 11 women and 9 men, making it the first party in Irish history to ensure at least 50% of the ticket were women. The Head Office staff was beefed up from two to seven by mid-campaign – still a fraction of the size of larger parties, but enough to coordinate the day-to-day of an election campaign, and to finish the 123-page election manifesto. “We don’t have time to write a short one,” General Secretary Brian Sheehan told me on my first day.
Somehow, the campaign was wrenched from an unmitigated disaster to an overall success. Sinn Féin were the story of the 2020 election, but the Social Democrats were a happy footnote. Co-leaders Catherine Murphy and Róisín Shortall were comfortably re-elected, with four new TDs joining them. Three of these were the Councillors who had remained after Donnelly’s exit in 2017; Cian O’Callaghan, Jennifer Whitmore and Gary Gannon. The fourth had been elected by just one vote in the 2019 local elections and was a 16/1 outsider in the bookies for Cork South-West. Holly Cairns’ stunning success broke the mould.
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The gig was still on for the Social Democrats in the Covid-impacted 33rd Dáil. Again, the party was not without its difficulties internally, with more staff comings and goings and various internal matters causing consternation. The co-leader model, such as it was, could never have succeeded in the long-term. Halfway through the Dáil term, Shortall and Murphy announced that they were stepping down as leaders. The obvious choice was Cairns, a superb communicator who sounded and looked nothing like a traditional politician. The party’s polling average steadily climbed from early 2023; although a range of 4-6% was far from spectacular, it regularly put the Social Democrats into fourth place and was evidence of an increased, if still small, voter base. Party membership swelled under Cairns, albeit from a low base, although many of the new recruits were signalling support for the party rather than volunteering for active roles.
The 2024 local elections saw the party almost doubling its local authority presence to 35 seats, although these remained concentrated in Dublin, Kildare, Wicklow and Cork, with only 6 Councillors outside those four counties. The European elections were not as successful. The results for Dublin candidate Sinead Gibney and Rory Hearne in Midlands/North West were disappointing, leading many commentators outside the party to predict an end to their political careers before they had even started. Within six months, both were TDs.
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Despite the stable if unspectacular polling, the increase in Council seats and the overall strong performance in the 33rd Dáil of its 6 TDs, commentators yet again gave the Social Democrats little chance heading into the November 2024 general election. Shortall and Murphy, both satisfied with the local election results in their respective constituencies, announced that they would not contest. The constituency review podcasts in the run-up to the elections predicted those seats would be lost. Only two seats, that of Cian O’Callaghan and Jennifer Whitmore, were deemed safe; Gary Gannon and Holly Cairns were deemed at risk or worse. Few, if any gains, were predicted.
Internally, the party was in a better place than in 2020 or 2016, with activists now weathered and local and national organisations more experienced in electioneering. But the Social Democrats continued to struggle to compete nationally, eventually selecting 26 candidates to run in 25 of the 43 constituencies. The party remained well-served in Dublin, where it ran viable campaigns in all constituencies except the new Dublin Fingal West. Cairns’ impact was being felt in Cork, where the party contested everywhere except Cork North-West. But the northern half of the country was not well-served, with just two candidates, in Meath West and Louth, north of the Dublin-Galway line. The electoral strategy, similar to 2020, focused on winnable seats, but it was borne out of necessity too. Other than token candidates, the party would have struggled to contest any of the remaining 18 constituencies.
The outcome was unexpected by all but the most optimistic insiders. Perhaps the party’s most potent weapon, Holly Cairns was absent from much of the short campaign, although her present was still felt online, not least on polling day when she gave birth. But the strength of individual candidates combined with the small base built up by the party saw all six seats retained, with Aidan Farrelly and Rory Hearne taking the seats once held by Catherine Murphy and Róisín Shortall respectively. New additions were Pádraig Rice in Cork South-Central, Liam Quaide in Cork East, Sinead Gibney in Dublin Rathdown, Jen Cummins in Dublin South-Central, and Eoin Hayes in Dublin Bay South. Celebrations were short-lived with the removal of the whip from Hayes just days after his election over his disposal of shares from Israeli-linked firm Palantir. The election of Senator Patricia Stephenson early in 2025 added to the parliamentary ranks, although the fallout over Hayes’ actions remains to be resolved.
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The party’s challenges in sustaining growth are obvious. Political geography remains a concern; the party is strong in Dublin, Cork, Kildare, Wicklow and a couple of other strongholds, but has no public representatives in about half of all constituencies. The demographic base of support is similarly shallow. The party continues to enjoy strong support among urban voters, younger voters, those with higher levels of education, and those from more middle-class backgrounds; no party of the left can take itself seriously without working-class support, and that which it has remains patchy. The rawness of party members and local organisations remains, although it has been somewhat tempered by recent electoral experience. Nevertheless, the old slogan to ‘educate, agitate and organise’ remains a requirement – political education projects through the likes of the Left Bank summer school are an important start.
Ireland’s voters have moved slightly to the left in recent elections, but nothing is permanent in politics. The challenge of building a social democratic alternative in the midst of a rightward shift in much of the west cannot be underestimated. Many older social democratic parties around Europe have long abandoned many of their core principles while retaining their names and symbols. Here, Sinn Féin have taken on the socialist mantle in some respects, but it is unclear how enduring this shift in their politics will be given the varying demands on that party, north and south. New international challenges such as increased militarism, the power of tech oligarchs and the effects of Artificial Intelligence on employment further complicate future prospects for the left.
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After time off on maternity leave, Holly Cairns is expected to resume leadership duties in the months ahead. She will return to a party bigger in size, more secure in its future, and one which has outlived its fellow 2015 projects, not to mention several rounds of death-knells from political commentators.
The Social Democrats have also outlived various other left-of-centre projects from Irish political history. Most of these, such as Democratic Left (1992-99) and the Democratic Socialist Party (1982-90) merged with the Labour Party, and many commentators continue to predict that this will be the likely outcome for the Social Democrats. But although the two parties are in a similar space on the centre-left, the culture, membership and, often, political focus in both differs considerably. There is zero appetite among Social Democrats members for a ‘merger’ with the Labour Party.
What is perhaps more likely, and what may result in a better outcome for all sides, is collaboration and cooperation rather than combination. There is little talk of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael merging, despite their work together in government and paper-thin ideological differences. It benefits both parties to run separately while adopting common positions in government. Ireland’s electoral system has allowed for smaller parties to achieve some degree of success and to survive; indeed, it is worth remembering that Sinn Féin in the 26 counties was a minor party for much of its history, holding just four Dáil seats as recently as 2011.
The Green Party, humbled by their decimation in the 2024 elections, should also be included in collaborative work inside and outside the Dáil given the importance of the environmental agenda to any alternative bloc. The SDLP is another obvious candidate for cooperation; although many of their members remain reluctant to pick sides in the 26 counties, their leadership is of the left and their previous ‘partnership’ agreement with Fianna Fáil is long since gone.
Ireland does not need another solely liberal grouping. It is crucial that any bloc is rooted in a left-wing economic analysis, rejecting mere identity politics or reactionary approaches. Such a bloc needs to be unapologetic in its commitment to public services, to addressing the crises in climate and biodiversity, to rejecting racism and the targeting of migrants, and to championing workers’ rights and peace. There are other non-aligned political campaigners and activists on the left, and those in smaller organisations, who would support both electoral and non-electoral approaches. The importance of the trade union movement in promoting genuine collaboration cannot be overstated.
There will be nothing straightforward about this approach. Attempts by Ivana Bacik to enlist the Social Democrats and Greens in post-election strategy around government formation were rebuffed. Attempts by the Social Democrats on several councils to form left-wing alliances were rejected by Labour Councillors, who instead opted for deals with Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil. The likelihood of groupings such as People Before Profit and others coming on board electorally is slim. And there remain major differences around political strategy, if not policy; the Social Democrats have articulated a desire for a left-wing government, and a preference for working with Sinn Féin and others on the left; Labour’s preferred strategy has almost always veered more towards Fine Gael, until now at least.
The upcoming Presidential election presents a real prospect for collaboration between at least some of these groups in supporting Catherine Connolly. Ongoing campaigns on housing, Palestine and the cost of living crisis provide continued opportunity for cooperation.
As in other countries with multi-party systems, opportunities exist for a substantial left-of-centre bloc capable of leading a government and delivering genuine change. Few predicted the Social Democrats would be left standing ten years after they formed; if the party can sustain their growth and convince voters that they truly offer an alternative, they may very well be at the head of it.