One of the questions political pundits asked as the results of the Irish general election of 2034 came in was how no one had predicted it. One older pundit pointed out that the new generation of political correspondents simply were not paying attention to the technical details of the voting system changes the government had made, more concerned with running vox pops and high-emotion stories, but there was a more significant factor at play. The outgoing government had quietly amended the terms of reference of the constituency boundary commission to push their constitutional limit, and restrict all constituencies to a maximum of three seats. Sinn Fein, as the main opposition party, had made a perfunctory objection but then had gone quiet for the exact same reason the NDP supported it. Because under the Irish Single Transferable Vote system, a small number of seat per constituency makes the quota of votes needed to be elected higher, and generally that allows larger party candidates to stay in the count longer, picking up additional preferences as the smaller parties’ candidates get eliminated. It makes a two party system more likely, especially with polls showing both the NDP and Sinn Fein neck and necking in the late 30s.

The Progressive Alliance (PA) of Fianna Fail, Labour, the Social Democrats and the Greens had, much to the surprise of the media, managed to agree a pact, running joint PA candidates, and between them had polled into the early teens right up until the final week before polling day, and the TV debate between the party leaders. Both Sinn Fein and the NDP had insisted that all party leaders be invited, not just the charismatic senator PJ Okono of Fianna Fail, the de facto alliance leader. Despite his pleading, the other three ineffectual party leaders insisted upon attending. Okono, who was probably the finest political orator of his generation, was reduced in time to fit in the others, and failed to have the impact he could have had in the debate, just as Sinn Fein and the NDP planned.

The count revealed its secrets quickly. The NDP vote had dropped slightly, and the alliance parties had all seen an increase in their votes, but the three seat carve-up (“The EveMander”, a few wags called it) delivered exactly as expected. PA candidates were doing respectably but narrowly losing the third seats to either NDP or SF candidates. As the final results came in on Sunday morning, it was clear that the NDP had scraped a slightly increased majority, and that the country was now a Two Party With Scraps system, the only real benefit being Okono topping the poll in Mayo and other PA candidates acting as sweepers for Fianna Fail. Fine Gael barely registered in the election, its voters and members effectively decamped to the NDP or Fianna Fail.

The newly-elected government moved quickly on its success. The referendum on polling day to allow the government to limit the number of asylum seekers passed by 62%, and despite various objections from the European Commission and the European Parliament the reality was there were enough governments of comparable bent sitting on the European Council to allow the government to “do an Orban” and ignore Brussels on this matter. Work began immediately on building state of the art refugee processing centres modelled more on Centre Parcs than the dire Direct Provision facilities. The far-right mounted protests outside NDP TDs offices that the government was building “resorts for foriegners”.

The new budget finally delivered on the national security commitments promised for decades by various governments. The government would meet the 2% NATO defence spending obligation (despite not being in NATO), and would soon take delivery of a dozen second-hand Rafale fighters from France, as well as four brand new Naval vessels specifically equipped for patrolling Ireland’s undersea infrastructure and acting against unauthorised vessels sub-surface. There would also be considerable investment in existing and new Defence Forces facilities acros sthe country. However, the minister for defence told the house that given the controversial nature of additional security spending, extra funding to specific counties would only go ahead with the written consent of local TDs. If local TDs objected, the extra funding would go to other counties. The opposition were in uproar for forty minutes.

The government also decided to focus on the question of a United Ireland. The previous Sinn Fein government had set up a citizen’s assembly which had produced a report with much aspiration and little detail, and so the government decided to move forward, commissioning an expert legal panel to draft a new constitution for a United Ireland to act as a debate opening document.

The Taoiseach also raised the age-old question of funding the new entity. Speaking at the commissioning of the new naval ship LE Fiontar, she announced that a country that was serious about reunification should start planning for it, and so the government intended to introduce a modest Unity Tax on income, pensions and social welfare payments, the revenue which would go into a “lockbox” to fund the gap in spending if needed when a United Ireland eventually came about. She stressed that pretty much every adult in the country would pay it, as she had no doubt that every Irish patriot would be happy to make a contribution to such an enterprise. Finally, however, she said that given it was such a long-term plan, saving money for possibly years or decades, she would put the proposal to a referendum and that the Irish people would finally be able to firmly put their foot down in favour of a United Ireland, but also show they world they were just talking about it but putting their money where their mouths where.

As if that weren’t enough, she also announced that the government intended to seek approval in a referendum to proceed with the building of a number of nuclear power plants around the country, along side a number of fast-tracked massive wind and solar farms, both on and offshore. She stressed that no community would be forced to take either without prior approval in a local plebiscite. However, she also proposed that given we were asking local communities to carry the burden of national energy infrastructure, those same communities would also be designated, if they voted accordingly, income tax free zones up to a very generous threshold, the idea being that such a threshold would protect house prices as it would transfer with the home.

We will, she said, abide by the will of the people.