Seanad Election 2025: Ireland’s Anti-Woke Fightback Draws Blood?

Norris, Bacik, Ruane, Flynn, Robinson.

A conceit to residual Protestant hegemony and ironically styled as a mix of Mussolini’s very own Senate and Pope Pius XI’s antidote to Marxism as expressed via the vocational panels, the Irish Seanad has earned a deserved reputation for being a hotbed of progressive politics arguably extending to WB Yeats’ denunciation of divorce or lack thereof and his desire to exclude Catholics from such debates. 

Intended as a corporatist counterweight to Dáil Éireann, the Upper House was readymade for the NGO complex during the 2010s providing a megaphone for left voices. Primed for technocratic politics and avoiding getting axed by Enda Kenny in 2013, in essence the Seanad was a fallback position not just for failed government candidates but for left politicos too unpopular to exist at a grassroots level.

From Alice-Mary Higgins to Aodhán Ó Ríordáin or LGBT fanatic Fintan Warfield, the Upper House has been the saviour for many prominent left figures and instrumental for the resurrection of the Labour Party post-FG coalition in large part due to their inordinate influence over public sector trade unions.

The dysfunctional careers of far-left Senators Eileen Flynn and Lynn Ruane epitomised the extent to which the Seanad has been captured by the absolute nadir of girlboss politics with the latter TCD seanadóir earning national eye rolling for her dense input during the recent euthanasia debate.

Despite this drift to the liberal-left however it would be hard to dismiss the de facto emergence of a centre right bloc in the Upper House coming to prominence in last year’s Hate Speech debate.

Even ruling party politicians within the confines of the Seanad including Fianna Fáil’s Lisa Chambers felt inclined to join in on the crusade against the bill that would’ve seen hefty jail sentences imposed on those in possession of hateful material with intent to distribute. 

Spearheaded by a political axis of Senators Michael McDowell, Rónán Mullen and Sharon Keogan this informal network looks only set to expand and become more proactive in the coming Oireachtas term.

While glacial in nature, this week’s Seanad results saw not only major progressive figures fall at the final hurdle including the consistent vote loser Hazel Chu, the abortion flip-flopper Anne Rabbite, and the lab-created Democratic Party operative Katherine Zappone, but a strengthening of this centre right alliance to include Aontú’s Sarah O’Reilly as well as TCD’s Aubery McCarthy.

Hardly a political revolution, this growing forum of centre to centre right seanadóiri are likely to form a vocal outlet against the next government mimicking similar fightbacks on trans-mania and hate speech legislation.

Irish politics still leans to the liberal/left of the spectrum but similar to the ejection of the Greens, the defeat of the family and care referendum and emergence of explicitly right leaning/nativist councillors as well as growing awareness of migration matters signals a changing zeitgeist.

It was noticeable in this week’s Seanad election the polltopping of Senators McDowell and Keogan on their respective panels followed not far by NUI’s Mullen. With speculation of a McDowell punt at the Phoenix Park rife, a reasonable bet is that the Seanad and the nexus around it are primed, for better or worse, to capitalise off the right-wing pivot a good chunk of the Irish public appear to be embracing.

While it may be wishful thinking to view the 27th Senead as at the avant-garde of the nascent and embryonic right-leaning opposition to the monocultural liberalism that has infected Ireland for decades, the makeup of which offers a glimmer of hope, ultimately the few powers they do possess may offer at the very least a counterbalance. 

What was originally conceived to maintain the vestiges of the ancien régime of the Protestant Ascendancy amid Gaelic Catholic revolutionary fervour in the 20th century may yet contribute to the toppling of the waning edifice of late stage liberalism in Ireland.