GE2024: Attack Ads, Money Problems, and the WSJ

Before I get into it, you may have noticed that TheBriefing.ie has had a makeover. My long-time collaborator and friend Brent Gorsky did a full re-brand, including the very cool - and hand made - collages. He wrote about the strategy behind it here.

And, I have added a "support our work" page to the site, should you wish to chip into our running costs.

OK so today:

• Does Sinn Féin's lack of a digital campaign signal financial problems?
• Murdoch's WSJ weighs in on our tax dependency issues
• Attack ads are everywhere!
• And, the Irish Freedom Party launch cross-platform ad campaign

Mo (public) money, mo problems?

I recently posed the question here about why Sinn Fein has not been spending anything close to what it did in the May/ June elections, or, to what other parties are. I put the question to Sinn Fein, who did not answer, which left me to speculate; and the most interesting way to speculate is, of course, with data.

One possible answer is that the party does not have any money - or at least any money it can use in the campaign. So I went back through 8 years of financial returns the party submitted to SIPO, an experience so frustrating it formed the basis of my opinion piece earlier in the week.

From this data I gathered that:

• The party is flush with cash - but at the end of last year, pretty much all of it was state funds which can not be used in campaigning
• The party's income from membership is down - individual subs dropped by 44% last year, to the lowest it has been since 2016; Fine Gael, by comparison, declared over 5 times the membership income last year
• Their fundraising income is up, funnily enough, relative to previous years - twice what it was in 2020, their peak year for membership income. But it is less than the other big parties; SF's 2023 National Draw netted €171k, Fianna Fail's netted €456 and Fine Gael's €550
• The party spent big in May /June, declaring €641k in expenses for the EP elections; in 2019 they spent just €262k. The northern entity also had a Westminster election in July

I shared this data with The Irish Times news team this week, in no small part because a) they have lawyers, and b) I really did want to get give them space to counter this if it wasn't accurate. It made it into a story on Sinn Fein finances in Saturday's paper, though without any satisfactory response from the party.

What could this mean?

The problem with money in politics is that it can be seen as a proxy for popular support, especially in Ireland where we have donation limits, and membership is a big source.

But the reality is also that policies that favour the well off are more likely to lead to healthy income; Fine Gael individual membership is twice as expensive as Sinn Féin's, for example. Also, power attracts money, reinforcing incumbency advantages that, according to Stefan Muller, is incredibly high in Ireland, possibly the highest in the world.

Uncle Sam takes note

On Wednesday I wrote about the precarious state of our fiscal dependency on US multinationals; Yesterday, Murdoch's Wall Street Journal front page had a story lamenting Ireland's tax bonanza at US expense, which even featured a nod to the (bloody) bike shelter.

Attack ads are popping up everywhere

There was a big fuss made about the Fine Gael "piggy bank" attack ad during the week. There are actually a ton of attack ads running online:

• Paul Murphy last night launched an attack ad on Facebook / Instagram using the now infamous RTE footage of Simon Harris’s encounter with disability worker Charlotte Fallon
• Fianna Fáil are running attack ads featuring a Micheal Martin clip from Monday’s debate; featuring his "where was the Sinn Fein movement for the last 100 years" remarks
• Fianna Fáil are also running an attack ad on Google, with Darragh O’Brien highlighting Sinn Fein’s proposal to scrap first time buyer supports
• Aontú have an attack ad against the Government parties, part of their big theme of waste; it shows the party leader standing outside the National Children’s Hospital

Irish Freedom Party launched ad campaign

Herman Kelly of the Irish Freedom Party launched YouTube ads on Friday. In the June European elections they ended up spending about €7k on Google ads. These new ads just target Co. Louth, reaching up to 40,000 people in that county. The ad is a straight piece to camera, promising an end to “open borders”, which are blamed for the lack of housing. 

The party also has about 34 ads running on Meta platforms. This includes one by Donegal candidate Eamon McGee, standing in front of a school, talking about “another plantation centre” for the county.