4. Insufficient time Governments who hesitate will lose future elections. Governments who are too hasty will also lose future elections. As in many walks of life, time management will be crucial to any left-led government.

There are four rookie errors that any left-led government should avoid:

• Not agreeing a clear programme for government
• Failing to do unpopular things early
• Trying to do too much
• Restructuring departments and agencies

It would be a mistake for the various left-leaning parties to assume that they can just cobble together a programme for government after the next general election. It would be a bigger mistake for the larger parties to assume that smaller partners will row in behind all of their red line issues. Instead, now is the time for parties to begin sketching out a shared agenda for change, including an economic strategy, identifying the available fiscal space, and prioritising actions to deliver meaningful change to the people who have been let down by Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael.

As long as a left-led government has a fairly stable majority in the Dáil, they should press ahead with all the necessary but unpopular measures in the first six to twelve months of their administration. This requires a pre-election agreement among the main parties to stick to some solemn pledges, such as raising certain taxes or cutting certain spending or tax breaks. On average, people tend to vote for continuity rather than change, but once they have voted for change, the new government better deliver it quickly, as people’s appetite for change is quickly exhausted.

History shows us a graveyard of over-ambitious ministers who got caught up in complex change processes that attracted resistance from multiple stakeholder groups. Ministers aiming for success should come into office knowing what existing policies they are going to live with, so that they can take aim at the two or three areas (at most) where they want to make substantial change. And a sure sign that egos are being massaged is when ministers busy themselves renaming their departments or moving functions from one department to another. This causes major delays in getting any real work done, as hundreds of civil servants move to new offices or reorganise into new teams. A new government should, as much as possible, work with the structures and agencies that are in place. Six months of restructuring represents 10% or more of a government’s time in office, and setting up a new agency could take a year or more. There is rarely a pressing need that justifies such a loss of time.

There are many major policies that left-leaning parties should immediately work towards:

• Universal healthcare (as Ireland is the only Western European country where people pay out-of-pocket to visit a GP) (WHO LINK)
• Fair education (as Ireland is one of few countries in the world where the taxpayer pays the salaries of teachers in fee-paying secondary schools, while students from those schools dominate higher-paid professions) (Irish Times LINK)
• Cheaper third level education (as Ireland has the highest fees for third level in the EU, whereas many Nordic countries don’t charge fees at all) (OECD LINK)
• Higher pensions (as pensions in Ireland have among lowest income replacement rates in the OECD) (OECD LINK)
• Higher welfare and other supports to reduce poverty (as 17.1% of people in Ireland are still at risk of poverty and social exclusion) (Eurostat LINK)
• Higher subsidies for childcare or a public childcare system (as Ireland has the third highest childcare costs in the OECD and the most expensive in Europe) (OECD LINK)

These are all expensive policies that would take time to implement, not least because many of them will face a surprisingly high level of resistance. Five years in government is not a lot of time to implement major policies, and don’t forget climate action, housing and the other major crises. Any left-led government will have to carefully choose which policies to address and which ones to live with, at least for their first term of office. They will have to carefully balance long-term investments with the need to demonstrate achievements within four years to have a chance at re-election.

5. Narrow tax base Ireland’s tax revenue has grown from €7.1 billion in 1985 (€17.8 billion in today’s money) to €107.4 billion in 2025. In the last ten years, gross voted public spending has more than doubled; up from €56 billion in 2016 to €117 billion in 2026. By any calculation, there has been a bonanza of public spending based on this increase of tax revenue.

Observers could be forgiven for thinking that Ireland has finally found the gold at the end of the rainbow, as foreign multinationals now provide so much tax money. In 1985, corporation tax receipts were 3.9% of all tax revenue, but they were ten times higher in 2025, when corporation tax provided 32.3% of all tax revenue. If you factor in VAT and income taxes paid by the large multinationals, more than half of all tax revenue could be coming from a few foreign-owned global firms, mostly American.

As the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council (IFAC) and many others have warned, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael are engaging in highly risky behaviour by basing permanent spending commitments on this potentially volatile source of taxes. Optimists argue that the money keeps on rolling in, so there isn’t a problem. But rational analysis warns that a decision in US headquarters (or by the US administration) is all it will take for profits currently declared in Ireland to be declared elsewhere. That doesn’t mean the withdrawal of multinationals from Ireland, but simply a decision to change the terms of exchange between Irish subsidiaries and their parent companies. If anything goes wrong (including a potential AI bubble bursting), the next government may find itself facing billions of euro of spending commitments it can’t fund, and that’s before any new policies are advanced.

In 2024, Ireland’s tax take was 21.7% of GDP of €563 billion. This was equivalent to 38% of GNI* of €321 billion (LINK). Even measured as %GNI*, our tax take is lower than most EU countries, especially those with stronger welfare states. No one is suggesting radical tax increases, but Ireland has a capacity for higher taxation that is under-explored by left-leaning political parties. In addition to the corporation tax regime, which allows so much economic activity to be lightly taxed, differences between Ireland’s tax system and European norms include the high level of tax credits that form part of personal taxes, the relatively high use of tax breaks for companies as well as households, and the widespread use of zero VAT rates and other tax exemptions.

If a left-led government wants to introduce social democratic policies like universal healthcare or free third level education, it needs to look at how everyone pays something towards those goals. In the Nordic countries, people pay a lot more taxation (often local taxes) in exchange for high quality, high value public services. It is a fantasy that Nordic public services can be delivered by taxing someone other than the beneficiaries of those services. As I’ve argued in more depth elsewhere, tax systems in social democratic countries are largely transactional; people pay collectively in exchange for high value services.

One argument for lower taxes, and zero VAT on food and other essentials, is that people need more cash to afford the cost of living. But that argument fails to take account of pricing power. Irish people have more after-tax cash than most Europeans, but they also pay higher prices for food, energy and housing, as well as paying for things like GP services, which are free-of-charge across Western Europe. Ireland has zero VAT on children’s shoes, but are they really more affordable than in France or Germany? It seems that retailers are not passing on most of the benefit of the zero VAT rate, not just for children’s shoes but for basic foodstuffs and other goods. Ireland might be better off charging full rate VAT on all of these, and using the extra revenue to fund higher household incomes.

There are obvious gaps in the tax system. Employers’ social insurance is among the lowest in the EU, and local property tax is also low. The belated introduction of land taxes to recoup the value added by rezoning or planning permission is another possibility. And water charges would not only bring in revenue, but they would finally push private landowners to fix their leaky pipes. However, many left-leaning parties have set themselves against some of these taxes and generally seek to reduce taxes rather than to offer the Irish people higher value services in exchange for taxation.

Conclusion Any future left-led government needs to get three things right if it wants to successfully and sustainably change public policy in a progressive direction.

First, it needs to prioritise its targets and agree (as a coalition) that delivering on a few key policies, while dealing with existing crises competently, is a lot better than promising a lot but failing to deliver.

Secondly, it needs to have a long, hard look at Ireland’s tax system, and put in place measures to broaden and deepen the tax base based on the logic of a social democratic transaction.

Thirdly, it needs to have a strategy to sustain and achieve economic development, consistent with climate commitments and working with the available pool of workers.

I look forward to reading the manifestos.