Crime boss takes on Sinn Féin leader and Brussels veteran in Dublin election

Voters heading to the polls in Dublin Central in Friday’s general election will have to choose from a list that includes Ireland’s opposition leader, the head of Brussels’ Eurogroup of finance ministers — and a notorious criminal.

For 65-year-old grandmother Georgina, the veteran gangster is the obvious choice.

“I definitely know who I’ll be voting for: it has to be ‘The Monk’,” the 65-year-old grandmother said, using the nickname for Gerry Hutch, patriarch of one of Ireland’s most notorious crime families. “He’s from the inner city. He knows the needs of the people.”

Georgina was speaking as she locked up her daughter’s hair salon — a small business that will shut for good in January after being hobbled by high costs — in the constituency’s hipster neighbourhood of Stoneybatter.

Taxes and the cost of living have become key issues for Taoiseach Simon Harris as he seeks a record fourth term in office for his conservative Fine Gael party. Georgina believes Hutch is the best bet for Dublin Central constituency even though police say the Hutch organised crime group is involved in drugs, money laundering and guns.

Hutch, 61, sensationally entered the race after being released on €100,000 bail following his arrest in Lanzarote for alleged money laundering, which he denies. He is one of 171 independents among the 685 candidates standing.

His rivals in the four-seat Dublin Central constituency include opposition leader Mary Lou McDonald of Sinn Féin and Fine Gael’s Paschal Donohoe, who besides his EU role was architect of Ireland’s last nine budgets as finance and then public expenditure minister.

Spanning busy shopping streets, drug and crime-ridden inner-city areas, gritty council flats and middle-class suburbs, Dublin Central reflects many of the concerns of the Irish electorate.

Ireland’s housing crisis is one of the most pressing. Official data out this week showed house prices rose more than 10 per cent in the 12 months to September and new rents are rising at more than 8 per cent.

Despite pressure on voters from the housing squeeze and high living costs, polls suggest Fine Gael and centrist Fianna Fáil are set to remain in power, unlike in UK and US elections where the incumbents lost significantly.

The former enemies, which have dominated Irish politics for a century, have governed in coalition since 2000, with the Greens as junior partner.

Buoyed by a huge budget surplus and a €14bn windfall in back taxes from tech giant Apple, parties are offering tax cuts and spending splurges such as Fine Gael’s pledge to give newborn children €1,000 in a savings account.

The FT’s poll tracker shows Fine Gael, which has been in power since 2011 with various partners, leading on 24 per cent, with Fianna Fáil on 19.8 per cent. Parties need to win 88 of the 174 Dáil seats to form a government.

Support for Sinn Féin, the anti-establishment party that came within an inch of power in 2020 after pledging to fix the housing problem, had plummeted in the past year but has recovered to just under 18 per cent.

“The trends are positive for Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil: there’s a certain desire for stability, perhaps,” said Gail McElroy, professor of political science at Trinity College Dublin. “Sinn Féin have lost some credibility as an alternative . . . but there’s still room for a surprise.”

Support for independents, including from rural Ireland and the far right, has risen to 19.8 per cent. The stabbing of a child in Dublin Central a year ago inflamed anti-immigration tensions and sparked unprecedented riots. Ireland had the third-highest number of asylum applications per capita in the EU in the 12 months to August.

In an increasingly multicultural country where one in five people was born abroad, the constituency has African restaurants and immigrant supermarkets. The last of Ireland’s infamous Magdalene laundries for unmarried mothers remains a haunting presence.

Independent candidates like Hutch, the far-right Malachy Steenson and Clare Daly, a leftist former member of the European parliament long seen as sympathetic to Russia and China through her media interviews, are seeking to tap into voter discontent.

“Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil — forget it,” said Brendan Dunne, 71, a retired telecoms worker. “Hutch comes across well — I would give him a number three,” he said. In Ireland’s proportional representation system, voters rank candidates in order of preference.

“It’s wide open,” Dunne added. “Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil think they have it all wrapped up but anything can happen.”

Theresa Reidy, a senior politics lecturer at University College Cork, said Labour, the small leftist Social Democrats or the Greens could emerge as a coalition kingmaker. Sinn Féin, the pro-Irish unity party, has no firm allies and appeared to have “no clear pathway to form a government” — although around half of voters only make their choice in the campaign’s final week.

Jenny Donohoe, a 32-year-old single mum who has to rely on her father for help as childcare is so expensive, said she was “still in two minds . . . Sinn Féin would promise the world to you,” she said.

But she was considering a vote for them, as well as for independents and the Social Democrats, “because I just want to see something different”.

But Conal Menamin, 56, an online florist who plans to give first preference to the Greens, said he would include Donohoe on his ballot “because everyone needs an adult in the room and Paschal is the adult in the room”.

Analysts believe that Hutch, who received his first conviction aged eight, will struggle to get elected. Last year, he was acquitted of a 2016 murder that triggered a deadly feud with the Kinahan cartel, Ireland’s most notorious drug and organised crime operation.

He is light on specific plans, telling a crime podcast that if he is successful: “I won’t be taking any bullshit, I’ll rock the house.”

Hutch has some devoted supporters, including among residents near the inner-city Corinthians Boxing Club, which he bought and donated to the community. “He has big charisma,” said Liam Fitzgerald, a retired labourer.

“He’s a Robin Hood, he really is,” said Georgina. “That’s how people around here see him.”

Data visualisation by Clara Murray