09/03/2026
On the Road to nowhere -
Ten Years of Failure! This year marks ten years since the Irish National Party (NP) was founded. A decade on, it is worth taking stock, not with abstract commentary, but from the clear-eyed perspective of those of us who care about Ireland's working class, its communities, and the pursuit of genuine social progress.
What has the NP achieved in ten years? The answer is painfully simple: little of substance, and much that divides. Its most notable 'achievements' are not policy victories or constructive reforms, but party splits, infighting, and the deepening of divisions; both within its own ranks and in the broader ethon-nationalist ecosystem.
Leadership disputes, quarrels with other far-right and nationalist groups, and public spats on social media have marked its record.
Rather than building a coherent political movement, the NP has spent its decade embroiled in factionalism, exposing the fragility of an ideology built more on grievance and slogans than on constructive political work.
The NP presents itself as a party with a vision for Ireland. Yet a careful examination reveals it has no clear objectives, no meaningful strategies for housing, healthcare, education, or climate action, and has failed to produce a single comprehensive policy document in any of these areas.
Instead, it relies on vague principles and empty ideology, with little regard for practical outcomes. For a party claiming to represent the nation, this is not a minor oversight; it is a fundamental failure.
While our communities grapple with crises of housing and underfunded healthcare, the NP offers nothing but rhetoric, distraction, and finger-pointing.
When you step back from the drama and ask the basic question any worker would ask, 'What are they actually proposing?' the answer is: not much. They've never put forward a proper housing plan you could cost, deliver and hold them to. Nothing serious on hospitals, mental health, schools, or childcare. No detailed programme to tackle low pay, precarious work or inequality.
What they publish is a collection of slogans and 'principles' that sound grand in a speech but evaporate when you look for detail. They talk as if they're ready to run the country, but they haven't produced the kind of policy work that even a small trade union branch would expect for a campaign, never mind a party claiming to speak for the nation.
Other parties, whatever you think of them, at least bring out manifestos, budget figures, and clear commitments you can argue with. The NP dodges that responsibility. They hide behind big words about 'sovereignty' and 'identity' instead of doing the graft of setting out how many houses, how many staff, what laws, and with what money.
Their approach to the big social crises of our time shows how empty this all is. Take housing. We all know the score: eye - watering rents, people 'couch surfing' into their thirties, families trapped in emergency accommodation, entire generations locked out of a secure home. That didn't start with migration. It stems from decades of state policy that treated housing as an investment vehicle rather than a human need. Governments handed the keys to developers, vulture funds and big landlords, gutted direct public building and left tenants to fend for themselves.
The NP doesn't want to talk about any of that. Their line is brutally simple: 'send people back' and 'close the doors'. They blame refugees, migrants and asylum seekers for a crisis that was already raging when many of those people were still kids in another country. As if evicting a couple of families from a centre on the edge of town would suddenly knock a grand off the rent in Dublin 7 or re-open the boarded up social housing that councils never got funding to refurbish.
It's nonsense, but it's convenient nonsense for landlords and speculators who are more than happy to let someone else take the heat.
The same goes for the health system. Waiting lists, overcrowded A&Es, burned-out staff, people going private out of desperation, all the result of long-term political choices, underfunding and a drift towards a US-style model. But the NP's answer is to point at migrants again, instead of demanding a fully public system with enough beds, enough workers and enough money.
It's easier to shout about 'outsiders' than to take on the corporate interests and political parties that turned healthcare into a business.
The damage isn't just in what they fail to do, it's in what they actively stir up. In working-class areas, where cuts, crime and neglect have hit hardest, the NP and those orbiting around it have pushed people to turn their anger sideways instead of upwards. They tell lads in the flats that the main threat isn't the landlord jacking up the rent or the dealer who's had three generations on the gear, but the migrant family down the road trying to get by.
That's not politics; that's sabotage. Look at the unrest we've seen in recent years, in Coolock, and in the riots that tore through Dublin after the horrific stabbings in November 2023. Social media was flooded with clips and commentary from far-right accounts and NP supporters.
We know that named activists linked to the party have been charged in connection with those events; one prominent Dublin NP organiser is before the courts on serious charges, including arson on a Luas tram, violent disorder and looting. Another party member has already been imprisoned for a violent assault on a woman at a protest outside Leinster House. There are multiple examples of people associated with, or loudly backing, the NP ending up charged or convicted after confrontations and riots.
Who actually suffers when that happens? It's not just the party die-hards. It's young working-class people pulled into riots, ending up with criminal records, suspended sentences, or time in custody. They'll be the ones explaining those convictions on job applications while the online agitators keep posting. The damage to their futures, to their families, and to already fragile communities is very real, while the men who pumped them full of 'patriot' talk get to claim they were only 'reporting' or 'standing up'.
On top of that, you've got a murky overlap between far-right politics and the same criminal world that has plagued Dublin for decades. People with documented histories in armed robbery, heavy drug dealing and serious violence have re-emerged as 'community voices', fronting anti-migrant protests, standing for election on hard-right platforms, and turning up shoulder-to-shoulder with NP activists. They bring the same culture of fear, rumour and threat with them, only now there's a tricolour in the background and a fascist slogan in the caption.
All the while, the ideology they push isn't even rooted in Irish experience. It's lifted from British and European far-right scenes: the language, the conspiracy theories, the 'great replacement' rubbish. Some NP figures have long-documented connections to those circles. This is politics imported from people who historically despised Irish workers and Irish freedom, wrapped in the flag of a republic they neither understand nor respect.
That is a direct attack on everything our best traditions stand for. Real Irish republicanism, born in the tenements, on picket lines and in small townlands across the island, was always about solidarity across divides, not whipping them up. It stood against the empire, against the landlords, against the bosses, and for the right of ordinary people to control the wealth they create.
It is remembered that this country survived because our people were welcomed abroad when we had nothing. It doesn't suddenly decide, now that others are in need, to slam the door and pretend that's patriotism. Real socialism here means backing every worker and every poor community against the system that keeps us short, whether those workers were born in Tallaght or Tripoli. It means demanding public housing on a massive scale, rent controls with real teeth, a health service run for need not profit, serious investment in addiction support, youth services and community safety. It means putting kids' futures above the profits of landlords, vulture funds and drug gangs alike.
After ten years of the National Party, what are they left with? No serious policies, no credible route out of any of our crises, and a trail of division, court cases and shattered solidarity in working-class areas. They have managed to offer exactly what Ireland does not need: more hatred, more confusion, more neighbours turned against each other, rather than the system that keeps them down.
The NP doesn't bring solutions. It brings a smokescreen. It directs rage away from those with power and onto those with the least. It weakens the only force that has ever changed this country for the better, the organised, united working class. If we want a different Ireland, we won't get it by following a tiny far-right party that thrives on chaos. We'll get it by rebuilding solidarity across every background, standing together against exploitation and racism, and fighting for deep, democratic change in how this country is run.
