BCF
Ireland doesn't have a long tradition of comprehensive public services or very much of the spirit that animated the British Labour Party when it was first established.
Ireland was for a very important 100 years before independence a nation of small tenant farmers, and the main issue that brought people together (Parnell built the Home Rule movement on this) was tenant rights, and land ownership reform, effectively, the right to own your own farm. Small farmers tend to have a strong impulse to make their own way. Ireland had very little industry, and even though there were strikes in the early years of the 20th century and unions definitely grew in the course of the 20th century, the main political issue tended to be the 'national' question, with little or no left/right divide.
Both of the main parties, Fianna Fail (ALDE Group in the European Parliament) and Fine Gael (EPP Group in the European Parliament) are centre to right of centre, and they accounted for the vast majority of votes cast all through the 20th century. Labour really did not catch the imagination of the public at all. Fianna Fail positioned itself quite successfully as the voice of the small farmer and the urban poor for many decades.
Personal taxation rates in Ireland were very high in the 70s and 80s. This was a time when many of the foundations of the modern Irish economy were laid down, requiring a lot of investment in education, health and physical infrastructure (with massive help from the EEC). People grumbled and there was little to see initially for all the money that went straight to the government, but eventually the economy took off and Ireland left the 'Second World'.
(To illustrate the difference in priorities between Ireland and the UK, in Ireland money was spent on free school bus services that enabled children in rural areas to get to school and the rolling out of the community school model all over the country, often eradicating a county-run vocational/private, religious order-run academic divide in many counties that reflected a have/have not divide in society. Community schools tend to cater for most aspirations.
Money was not spent on a system like the NHS. When people in Ireland have some discretionary income they tend to buy private health insurance.)
Since the financial crisis, there has been a certain amount of balking (to say the least) at the idea that the taxpayer must carry the can for the cute hoors who stole millions and millions and crashed the economy, and deep suspicion that not even half of the story of what was done in the 90s and 2000s has come to light. I think that IT poll reflects that.
The poll also suggests about 44% of people surveyed would favour a general election. This either reflects unhappiness with the individual bank balance or a feeling on the part of many voters that their party could emerge in a strong position, with SF voters probably feeling particularly buoyant. The popularity of Varadkar is high, reflecting enthusiasm for his handling of Brexit and contact with EU leadership.
goo.gl/images/prCix8
Sinn Fein within the UK political compass.
goo.gl/images/2DGD7M
SF within the Irish political compass.
Sinn Fein sit in the European United Left/Nordic Green Left European Parliamentary Group, a left wing group that includes parties that are socialist/communist/vaguely redistributive/green.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_United_Left%E2%80%93Nordic_Green_Left
This is a good quote from a Reddit forum on SF, where it stands -
Sinn Fein in the Republic are a populist/nationalist party, in the north they are everything they railed against before the split in Sinn Fein, a non-abstentionist/centrist/nationalist party finally locked into a peace process rather than a protracted war.
The Workers Party (formerly Sinn Fein) could be considered the left wing Sinn Fein while Sinn Fein as it sits in government today is a populist party, perhaps even 'populist socialist' appealing to the hopes and fears of the general people with an eye fixated on a "United Ireland", if elected that facade will likely be dropped.
Sinn Fein today was born out of the rejection of Marxist/Left leaning elements within its own movement in the 1970's, the current leadership (Adams etc) sided with the provisionals in that split. In the Republic Sinn Fein, as a populist party have moved into a position neglected by Labour for a number of years, that of the defacto "left wing" alternative.
They have done so by adopting much of the language and ideas of their former colleagues in the Workers Party. If Sinn Fein are elected, they'll move back into their standard position as they have in the north
www.reddit.com/r/ireland/comments/2tv9no/how_leftwing_are_sinn_fein_really/
To a certain extent the comments under that one about the relevance of the 'political compass' diagrams to Irish politics ring true. Irish political stances are very fluid; consensus politics tends to be the order of the day, which makes attempts to graph the usual divides look a bit silly.
Here is another comment on the same Reddit page, from 'Cyridius', that illustrates the fluidity well:
This is a very complex question and it really comes down to "How left wing are the working class?".
Sinn Féin is populist left. That means they are at least nominally on the left, and they have Socialist rhetoric.
What makes Sinn Féin different to SYRIZA is that Sinn Féin is a singular entity - it's a self-made party, not a coalition of radicals from already established organisations. About 30-40% of SYRIZA are actual Communists, the rest would be more akin to Sinn Féin. So the question of SYRIZA and how radical they will behave is fairly up in the air. We know there's a large Communist contingent who are very radical - the rest, they'll be as radical as they're forced to be by the population.
This is the case with Sinn Féin. They're a populist left organisation and they don't want to break with Capitalism in a revolutionary sense. Even in a nominal way, breaking with Capitalism doesn't seem to come onto Sinn Féin's agenda in any serious capacity. So how "far left" Sinn Féin behaves is entirely dependent on how far left their support base forces them to be, through means of mass working class struggle, such as protests, strikes, occupation of work places etc. and the demands working class organisations with mass support put forward.
I'm a member of the Socialist Party and we discuss the idea of a Sinn Féin coalition with us quite often in the case of a general election in which they win but don't get a majority. We know ourselves and our strategy is geared around the fact that Sinn Féin is not really radical, that they've supported austerity, that on the council level they're definitely much more to the center and even right.
So our stance would be to coalition and set up a series of red line issues which we would collapse the government on if they were infringed on, and then to work outside the Dáil with mass workers' movements(Like the water charges protests, for example) to pressure Sinn Féin to move left from below. If we, a radical left organisation, are prepared to keep fighting Sinn Féin even when we're in coalition with them, that should be at least a little bit telling about how uncommitted they are to being on the left. The fact that they refuse to rule out coalitions with right wing parties like Fine Gael should also be telling.