Editorial: The scale of Sinn Fein's election failure is clear and it is time to stop denying it

​For more than three days we have been monitoring the Irish general election results. ​They are of huge cross-border significance.

By far the most important story for Northern Ireland is the way in which Sinn Fein has gone into reverse. Their poor performance became clear on Saturday evening, when most first preference vote tallies from across Ireland showed the republican party to have had by far the biggest vote fall of any party. On Sunday the 5.5% drop in vote share was confirmed.

Next, talk about the two main parties, Fianna Fail and Fine Gael, having suffered too was shown to be wrong. So why was this point made by commentators, and in Northern Ireland reports? It seemed a way of implying that SF had not done so badly.

In fact not only was the FF and FG vote static, they proved more attractive to transfers than they had been in 2020, and have now a larger share of seats in the Dail. Then they were eight seats shy of being able to form a government out of 160 TDs, now they are a mere two seats short, despite a larger number of TDs, 174. And Sinn Fein have, in contrast, a smaller shared of the Dail than last time. Now they have 39 seats, up from 37 in 2020 but this is a smaller share than then because there are more TDs.

We might be accused of being petty for pointing this out in such detail, but in fact it is other outlets that should in the pursuit of balance be emphasising this. Think how much broadcasting space has been given to the Sinn Fein pet project of a ‘New Ireland’. Rather than saying that FF and FG did badly when they didn’t – securing 43% of the vote, 10% more than Keir Starmer did in the UK, and when incumbents are being destroyed in elections – it is time to stop denying two disappointing developments for republicans: that unionists pulled ahead in the July general election and now this bad Irish election for the party that alone is obsessed with breaking up the UK.