Meetings to update Sinn Féin supporters about the party’s efforts to form a government have been taking across the country. They have already taken place in Cork, Dublin, and Newry. Others are set to the place Galway and Cavan over the next fortnight.

While focused on the party’s calls to be included to deliver a new ‘government for change’, Sinn Féin’s political opponents fear the events could be helping to build its momentum ahead of a possible second election.

Former Fine Gael TD Alan Shatter and a current Fine Gael minister both made a comparison with Nazi Germany in the 1930s, as did independent councillor Paul Gogarty, a defeated candidate in the Dublin Mid-West constituency.

“There is a touch of the Nuremberg rallies surrounding all this; it is on the edge of being sinister,” the Fine Gael minister was reported as saying. From another direction, Fianna Fáil TD Darragh O’Brien claimed the meetings were “right out of the Trump playbook”.

Outgoing Taoiseach Leo Mr Varadkar declared the events were “not normal” and that Sinn Féin “is not a normal party”. He described it as “the next phase in Sinn Féin’s campaign of intimidation and bullying”, adding: “I wouldn’t be surprised if their next step is to take to the streets.”

Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald described the comments as “a hysterical overreaction”. Speaking before the first meeting in Cork, which was attended by up to 1,000 people, Ms McDonald said: “Mr Varadkar’s comments were over the top and were a demonstration by him and by a political establishment who are desperately reaching for something to stop an unstoppable change in Irish politics.

“It is obvious that the political establishment are struggling with the result of the election. I think for any reasonable or sensible person, the suggestion that holding public meetings is somehow an affront to democracy is just ridiculous.”