Social Democrats confident of winning seven seats

Social Democrats co-leaders Catherine Murphy and Róisín Shortall have insisted the party can win seven seats in the election — thereby gaining key speaking rights in the next Dáil.

The TDs made the claim during the party’s final press conference of the campaign outside Leinster House yesterday, despite independent predictions their opinion poll growth may not be reflected in seat numbers.

While the party currently has three TDs in the form of Ms Murphy, Ms Shortall, and Stephen Donnelly and believes Niall Ó Thuathail in Galway West/South Mayo, ex-Labour senator James Heffernan and Sarah Jane Hennelly, both in Limerick, among others, are in contention, the party is not guaranteed any progression.

Speaking at the launch, Ms Shortall said she believes that “many” of the Social Democrats’ 14 candidates across the country “are in serious contention at this stage” and that “we’re targeting at least seven seats on Saturday [when vote counting begins]” as this is the figure which allows set speaking rights for a party in the Dáil.

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Asked if a result in which the party returns just its three existing TDs after the surge in poll support during the campaign would be considered a failure, Ms Murphy added: “We realise we only launched very recently, we’re very hopeful from the canvass returns we will improve. You can feel it on the ground.”

Meanwhile, Ms Shortall and Ms Murphy have hit out at the government parties for misreading what the public wanted from the election, a situation they said has led to voters moving their support to groups like the Social Democrats which are not making promises that may not be kept.

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“I believe the Government parties have seriously misjudged the mood of the electorate in this campaign,” said Ms Shortall.

“They got off to a very bad start, they thought it was just a matter of saying they’ll keep the recovery going and most people were saying ‘what recovery’? They hadn’t felt it.

“They also thought people just wanted tax cuts, and again they misjudged the public mood in that regard.

“I think it’s very interesting to see what happened in the debate [on Tuesday night], as the debate went on more and more people switched off.

There was bickering and old-style politics, and people are fed up with that,” she said.

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