Bacik has fire in her belly, but can she get Labour in tune with the public?
Labour Party leader Ivana Bacik with Alan Belmajdoub, chairman of the English Market traders' committee and Peter Horgan, Labour Party local area rep, at the English Market on Friday ahead of the Labour Party conference. Picture: Larry Cummins
Ivana Bacik admits she won't be releasing an album anytime soon, but she does have one karaoke act.
'Ring of Fire' by the great Johnny Cash was the anthem she had vocally mastered, or at least learned the lyrics of, ahead of her party's conference this weekend, which on Friday night included an LGBT karaoke event and a pop-up Gaeltacht in the hotel bar.
Fire is something the Labour Party has been accused of lacking in recent times, opting for a steady-as-she-goes approach, which has seen them bob at around at 3% to 4% in the polls.
This week, however, Bacik and her colleagues have moved to rock the boat and perhaps reassert their relevance by tabling a motion of no confidence in the Government.
"It's a decision I would never take lightly, I'm conscious that it's a big thing to do. There hasn't been a Labour motion of no confidence voted on in the Dáil for over 20 years," Bacik says.
But she says the Government has provided "no rational basis" for lifting the eviction ban and up until the decision was announced had indicated that the moratorium would be extended temporarily.
"Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the Greens are facing a real crunch point, a real crisis point. I know others have said it's like the Vat on children's shoes, it's of that order of magnitude. I think they were surprised by it but they shouldn't have been," she adds.
But what about her own party, a party that has never recovered from its time in government and the hammering it took in the 2016 election?
For Bacik, the very fact Labour served in Government is in itself a selling point, even if it has resulted in considerable pain.
"We're a party that's serious about delivering change. We're the only opposition party to have ever served in government, so we're serious about it, we're not content just to shout from the sidelines and be in a state of perpetual opposition."
Her main focus now will be on growing Labour back up again to achieve a critical mass in the next general election to give it a platform to deliver that change once again.
"My ideal government would be a green-red government — a Green Party, Labour, Social Democratic, left-of-centre alliance of parties that would be able to pull together a majority for the first time. Obviously that has not yet happened in Irish politics."
But she is still cautious of Sinn Féin and shies away from including them in her fantasy coalition.
One area Bacik wants to see significant change on is the Irish Constitution. Not just a tinkering around the edges but an entire overhaul to make it gender neutral and fully inclusive.
She says the Constitution is "peppered" with gendered references that should be re-examined. A referendum later this year to take the reference to women in the home out is a significant first step in the process.
"A gender neutral text was written back in 1996 by an expert group doing a constant review of the Constitution, and they published how the constitutional text would look if it was gender neutral.
"It's a really great exercise because for example, Article 45 of the Constitution refers to widows, but not widowers."
Despite her joking about her performance at the party conference karaoke night, Bacik enjoys her music.
She is an avid festival attendee and believes the licensed sale of cannabis should be permitted at Electric Picnic and other similar events.
Following international models, which have decriminalised possession and in some cases allowed licensed premises to sell cannabis is the obvious way forward.
"There's a clear momentum internationally to adopt a more rational harm-reduction based policy on drugs. So if you look at Canada, but also many states now in the US and of course Portugal closer to home, you see a new model of regulation of cannabis that's about legalising, but obviously about restricting sale in the same way that we restrict sale of alcohol or tobacco. I think that's a rational policy."
When asked if this could see licences provided to sell cannabis at music festivals similar to alcohol licences, she says yes, but this is the type of practical detail that would have to be hammered out by the upcoming Citizen's Assembly.
"I think there's ways to address concerns about harm, but also address the reality, which is that this is widespread, cannabis use is widespread and we need to be realistic about that and not be driving people into the criminal justice system and causing unnecessary stigma and I do think, as I said, there's a momentum internationally for this."
It's the type of progressive policy that the Labour Party hopes will lure supporters back.
