LAST UPDATE | 12 Oct

STEPHEN DONNELLY SAYS next week, Simon Harris says ‘full term’, Mary Lou McDonald has been calling for one for most of the current Government’s lifetime.

Everyone has a theory on when the next general election will be, but some are more informed than others.

Legally, one has to be held before March 2025 when the current Government will reach its five year limit, but many have suspected that as soon as the Budget was out of the way it would be game on.

Most in Leinster House are working to the assumption that it will be called in two weeks, that means we would be looking at a window of between mid-November to very early December for a poll date.

At the end of the day though, as the person with the power to dissolve the Dáil, Taoiseach Simon Harris is the only one who knows and he is keeping it a closely guarded secret. 

Yesterday he did give us perhaps the best hint yet about when it might be, when he told reporters in Washington what his priorities are before calling one: Passing essential budget legislation – like the Social Welfare and Finance Bills, setting the new Government housing targets, and “significantly” progressing mental health and defamation legislation.

So where does that leave us and when, technically, is the earliest an election can be called? 

The two big things that need to be gotten out of the way are the Finance Bill and the Social Welfare Bill, which will give effect to the Budget. Both are due before the Dáil next week. 

Usually, committee stage would then follow (This is where the bill is examined by TDs and Senators on the relevant Oireachtas committee).

However, in a somewhat unusual move, committee stage (and report and final stage) will all be carried out in the Dáil next Wednesday for the Social Welfare Bill. 

The Government has said this is to speed up the process and make sure the bill is in place to allow the planned double social welfare payments to go ahead in November.

So that is that out of the way, leaving the Finance Bill. This is also scheduled for its second stage on Wednesday.

Once second stage of the Finance Bill is complete it is then up to the Dáil to refer it to the Finance Committee for committee stage – this is currently scheduled for 5 November.

However, if it wanted to, there would be nothing stopping the Government from taking an approach similar to what it has done with the Social Welfare Bill and completing committee, report and final stage in the Dáil. 

Both bills must then go through the same stages in the Seanad.

In theory, this can be done pretty fast but it’s also worth noting that the Seanad continues to sit for up to 90 days after an election is called, unlike the Dáil which is immediately dissolved. 

This means legislation can still be debated in the Seanad while would-be TDs are out canvassing for the next Dáil.

Some have speculated that the Government may choose to guillotine both or either of these bills to speed up the process and clear the path to an election. 

Wait, what does it mean to guillotine a bill? 

If the government chooses to ‘guillotine’ a bill, it means they place a restriction on the time allocated to debate it in the Dáil or Seanad. When this happens, opposition parties will generally criticise the move because it means the bill may get passed without being fully debated.

Technically, the government could guillotine either or both of these bills, but it would be unprecedented, unpopular and as one Government TD put it “controversial”.

In general, Governments tend to guillotine legislation when they fell the opposition is holding things up, something that they can’t claim yet in this instance.

We are already seeing committee stage sped up for the Social Welfare Bill, and there is nothing to say the same couldn’t be done for the Finance Bill.

So in theory, these two key pieces of legislation could be boxed off before the end of next week, clearing the way for Harris to call an election.

But we still have the Taoiseach’s other priorities to think about: housing targets and the mental health and defamation legislation.

On the two pieces of legislation, Harris left it pretty open by simply saying he wants to see “progress”. A bit of a push on both fronts next week could suffice, from his perspective.

And on the revised housing targets, Housing Minister Darragh O’Brien said at the end of September that he expects to publish them in “the coming weeks”. 

So watch this space, once we start to see movement in any of these areas it will send the election rumour mill (even further) in to overdrive.