Mary Lou McDonald canvasses in the capital as polling day approaches

Disability, housing and animal welfare were raised with Mary Lou McDonald while on a canvass in Dublin yesterday.

The Sinn Fein leader appealed to voters to lend their support to the main opposition party.

She told them that the only way to improve various services was to change the Government.

A 25-year-old teacher from Dublin told the Sinn Fein leader that she “can’t afford to do anything” and “felt guilty” going shopping when she cannot afford to buy a house.

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She said: “You can’t sustain a life that you want in this country the way it is at the moment. You just can’t, we’re being pushed out the way it is, everything is too expensive whether it’s groceries, shopping.”

Ms McDonald said: “I want you to know at the heart of our efforts is housing.

“It’s young people in particular, and it’s not just the young people we want to come out to vote for your future, we want your parents, your grandparents.”

Ms McDonald spoke to two mothers about access to services for children with additional needs.

She said it was important to keep speech and language therapist graduates in the country and attract young people who had emigrated back.

Ms McDonald told one mother: “If we have five more years of Fianna Fail and Fine Gael back in Government together, it is not going to get better. We’re asking for a chance and we’re very, very acutely conscious of families like yours.”

Another mother became upset when speaking about her four-year-old son and how she had to stop working.

Ms McDonald told her: “We have a real real problem with timely assessment of needs and then access to the therapies and the supports that children need.

“The truth is all of this needs to change and the Government needs to change to drive it forward.”

Several people raised with her why enough candidates were not put forward by the party in the 2020 general election.

One man raised an issue with Sinn Fein’s housing plan, claiming it still involved vulture funds, to which Ms McDonald said “you need to get the mix right”.

He said: “I don’t see that we do need that mix,” to which Ms McDonald said “well, then we disagree” before shaking his hand.

Support for Sinn Fein is on the rise while backing for Fine Gael has fallen in the last three weeks, the latest opinion poll has revealed.

The Sunday Independent/Ireland Thinks opinion poll points to a rise in support for Sinn Fein, Independents and Aontu.

SF is up two points to 20%. Independents, which includes Independent Ireland, are up three points to 19%. There is a rise of two points in support for Aontu bringing it to 5%.

The Social Democrats on 5% drop one point with Labour unchanged on 4%.

The Greens are down one point on 3% while People Before Profit-Solidarity are unchanged on 2%.

The margin of error in this poll, which surveyed 1,420 voters, is plus or minus 2.3%.

Sinn Fein leader Mary Lou McDonald said that support for her party is ahead of already favourable poll numbers, adding that her party is “in it to win it” the election. She said that over the past week, an “energy” for the party had “come back very, very strongly”.

She said: “I think the weather reflects our mood. You know, this might be a winter election, but we have sunshine today.

“I know talking to people, particularly over the last week, this sense of purpose now, this sense of energy has come back very, very strongly.

“For us, this is very reminiscent of the last general election, where, when people had the space, cleared the space to assess what to do next, that appetite for change grew and grew, and I think that’s what’s going to happen.

“I think the polling results reflect that to some extent. But I actually think the mood is even ahead of those polling numbers.”

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