Fine Gael and Labour could score own goal demonising opposition

The frightening fact of this election for the Government is that neither Fianna Fáil nor Sinn Féin are terrifying voters, writes Gerard Howlin

MICHEÁL MARTIN was never going to star as a bogeyman. It shouldn’t matter but, he has the best poster of any party leader. The cerise tie gives definition on the lamp post and the close-up shot cropped at the forehead before it becomes follically challenged is a well-constructed image. And time has passed. It is not 2011 and some hurt has healed. New anger has arisen and is now directed at the present incumbents. They are present tense and between the crosshairs now. They have a future tense narrative about keeping the recovery going. But too many of their proof points are past tense.

If Fianna Fáil and Sinn Féin would wreck the economy and be improvident, Fine Gael and Labour have let them off the hook. Their economic policy of the past year beginning with the Lansdowne Road Agreement and continuing into Budget 2016 has been irresponsible. More especially giving out €1.5bn in supplementary estimates for 2015 — as much as they provided on budget day itself — days before the budget last October, was a caricature of what the Government says the opposition parties would do. People aren’t stupid. They hear the pot calling the kettle black.