David Davin-Power: McDonald plans for a parallel reality

Journalists arriving for Sinn Féin’s manifesto launch yesterday had to pass through an intriguing virtual-reality installation by Turner prize winner Tai Shani in Dublin’s Temple Bar Studio. You don a headset and find yourself transported into a strange world of abstraction.

Upstairs, it was little different, as Mary Lou McDonald unveiled her party’s plan for a parallel economic and political reality, where multinationals are indifferent to swingeing taxes on their assets; where small businesses remain unaffected by an increase in employer PRSI; and where unionists are happy to contemplate throwing in their lot with the Republic.

It was, McDonald declared, “game on for reunification”, insisting that there has to be a referendum on Irish unity within five years.

Of course, any border poll has to be called by the British government of the day, and she was less certain on how Downing Street might be persuaded.

Stopping short of making this a core issue for Sinn Féin — a red line that might prevent it from entering government — she confined herself to observing that “the wise thing” for every party is to plan for reunification nonetheless.

There’s no doubt Sinn Féin is buoyed by the revival of a working executive at Stormont and encouraged by its showing in the polls.

But Mary Lou still faced awkward questions about what influence its ard comhairle might have on any Sinn Féin minister in cabinet in Dublin, following the disclosure that candidates have to pledge to obey diktats from that body.

She argued that there are limits to the discretion of the party’s ruling council when it comes to office holders, and a clear “line of differentiation” between ministers and the ard comhairle, all of whom are elected at its ard fheis in any event.

The suspicion lingers, however, that transparency doesn’t come easy to the party; it’s not that long since Sinn Féin ard fheiseanna featured sessions closed to the media.

That was when the IRA campaign was at its height and it’s fair to assume delegates weren’t discussing the cost of childcare.

In fairness, McDonald has effectively managed the transition from those days, dispelling any whiff of cordite with confidence. Nonetheless, Sinn Féin is still quick to play the victim card.

Exclusion from the televised leaders’ debates “wouldn’t happen to any other party but Sinn Féin”.

The party’s economic proposals are certainly eye-catching. Abolishing property tax and ending USC on the first €30,000 earned would cost nearly €1.7bn annually.

Relief for the rental sector would cost €300m. The party would raise €200m by hitting banks with corporation tax and a higher levy — impositions likely to be borne ultimately by the consumer.

The income levy on those lucky enough to earn over €140,000, coupled with the proposed wealth tax, would raise half a billion, but who’s to say how many of those affected would simply vote with their feet?

McDonald was flanked by Pearse Doherty and Eoin Ó Broin, the party’s answer to Paschal Donohoe and Simon Coveney — well scrubbed, reasonable, and politically presentable.

Ó Broin’s housing proposals were well flagged: Build 100,000 homes over five years — but he conceded there would be serious labour shortages unless there is a radically ramped-up building apprenticeship scheme.

Sinn Féin wants to cap mortgage interest rates and measures that will tackle the insurance sector, yet on homelessness it throws up its hands, conceding that “governments can’t control what the private sector does in the housing market”.

The same surely applies to banking and insurance, where there isn’t a single indigenous player. It’s an industry that’s not amenable to pressure from the government, as Michael D’Arcy, minister of state at the Department of Finance, has discovered.

And with banks unwilling to lend, as things stand, measures aimed at cutting rates, caused in part by tough ECB requirements, could well make mortgages even harder to secure.

Sinn Féin’s was the last big manifesto launch, and the shape of the competing offerings is now clear.

Fine Gael aims to put a whopping €5bn into health alone and would meet Sinn Fein halfway on USC, raising the threshold to just over €20,000.

Fianna Fáil’s measures include an SSIA scheme to help first-time buyers amass a deposit and a doubling of the National Treatment Purchase Fund budget to tackle waiting lists in our hospitals.

Labour would freeze rents and build 80,000 social and affordable homes.

Auction politics — in cold storage during the austerity years — is back with bang.

But with single-party government a thing of the past, none of these packages can be implemented in full, and with all sides wary of imposing red lines, the real manifesto for the next government can only be written after Saturday week.