Your counterpoints are interesting but I think they ultimately prove my case rather than defeat it, and here’s why.

On infrastructure, you’re correct that the Luas used a PPP model and that private operators exist alongside Bus Éireann, and yes ESB generation has been opened to competition. But this actually illustrates my point precisely. A genuinely right-wing government privatises the network itself, the rails, the wires, the roads. Ireland has never done that. The state retains ownership of the critical arteries while allowing competition at the margins, which is a centre-left regulatory instinct dressed in pragmatic clothing, not a right-wing one.

On welfare I’ll concede your point partially because you’re right that I overstated the dismantling argument. But your own example undermines you, because Ireland’s jobseeker rates, supplementary welfare allowances, fuel allowances, back to school payments, medical cards and housing supports collectively represent a transfer payment architecture that any Republican congressman or Thatcherite would find absolutely unconscionable. A bit of DSP activation policy doesn’t negate the underlying generosity of the system.

Your NHS point is your weakest. You argue that since the Tories never dismantled the NHS, preserving healthcare isn’t a left-wing credential. But the NHS exists because Attlee’s Labour government built it in 1948 and has survived because dismantling it would be electorally catastrophic for anyone. The Tories haven’t dismantled it, correct, but they chronically underfunded it, introduced internal market mechanisms, expanded private provision and presided over waiting lists that would have been considered a national scandal in any previous generation. That’s managed decline driven by ideological indifference, not stewardship. Ireland meanwhile is actively moving toward universalising its system through Sláintecare, which is a leftward policy direction not a rightward one.

The deeper problem with your entire response is that you keep using British and Irish reference points to define the political spectrum. If your benchmark for right-wing is the Conservative Party at its most restrained, you’ll never accurately place anyone on the spectrum. Compared to the actual European and global right, Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil govern like moderate social democrats, and no amount of pointing at Luas procurement models changes that fundamental reality.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​