Irish leader feels ‘really bad’ over moment that could cost him an election

DUBLIN — Irish Prime Minister Simon Harris was forced to apologize Saturday to a disability services worker for treating her dismissively — a self-destructive campaign moment that could cost him dearly in next week’s election.

Harris, 38, has been criss-crossing the country and shaking hands frenetically in a bid to keep his centrist Fine Gael in power for what could be a party-record fourth straight term in the Nov. 29 vote.

But his brusque treatment of Charlotte Fallon at a supermarket check-out line could mark the moment when, much as happened during the last election in 2020, his party lost its momentum and its early lead in the polls. Caught on video by state broadcaster RTÉ, his Friday night exchange with a distraught Fallon soon surged to the top of  social media channels across Ireland.

Led by Sinn Féin, left-wing opposition parties pounced on his performance as a demonstration of Fine Gael’s callousness towards the needy and the marginalized.

Harris had met Fallon near the end of yet another long day and night in the field, having travelled cross-country from Dublin to County Cork and, eventually, the Supervalu grocery store in the town of Kanturk, population 2,800. His social media team produced a disco-inferno video montage of the day’s final campaign pit stop on Tik Tok, but omitted the key damaging bit. RTÉ caught it, though.

Harris initially walked past Fallon near the supermarket exit. The usually sure-footed campaigner turned back when she called after him — and told the Taoiseach his government wasn’t doing enough to fund community-based workers like herself who provide services for the disabled. “You’ve done nothing for us. Our people are suffering,” she said.

Harris responded by rejecting her views in rapid-fire and forthright terms. He offered a rushed handshake, then a brief final attempt to win the argument before heading for a celebratory photo op with Fine Gael loyalists outside.

As the moment turned into the biggest PR own-goal of Fine Gael’s campaign, Harris first issued a contrite but mostly self-justifying statement on his Instagram account.

“I didn’t give her the time that I should have given her, and I feel really bad about that. It’s not who I am,” he said in a statement that stressed his political origin story as the activist sibling of a brother with autism.

He then telephoned Fallon to apologize directly, and committed to meeting her again face-to-face to hear her grievances in detail. After the call, Fallon told the Irish Times that she was still shaken by the “horrible” treatment of her.

“I hope nobody else has to have an interaction like that ever, because it’s not very nice going home crying,” she told the Irish Times.

Harris’ stumble comes at the start of the critical final stretch of a three-week campaign dampened by ice-cold evenings and, this weekend, an Atlantic storm flooding isolated rural communities. This weekend represents the last chance to catch most voters when they’re at home during daylight hours.

Major new polling is about to be published by the Sunday Independent newspaper, followed by more polls Monday and Wednesday. The key three-way TV debate is set for Tuesday night pitting Harris against Foreign Minister Micheál Martin and Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald.

Previous polls have put Fine Gael only narrowly ahead of Martin’s Fianna Fáil, his main coalition partner and rival for center-ground votes, and the Irish republicans of Sinn Féin.

The margin of error in such polls means, in reality, the three parties could potentially be in a dead heat for top position. Typically the party with the most parliamentary seats earns the first right to form a coalition government. However, Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil both have dismissed the prospect of forming any governing partnership with Sinn Féin.