Prof Ken Carty (UBC) It is hard to click into an Irish politics podcast these days without hearing some reference to a coming leadership contest in Fianna Fáil. Perhaps that is not so surprising. The current occupant of the office has held it longer than any of his predecessors, with the obvious exception of the…
Dr Jonathan Arlow, Department of Politics and Public Administration, University of Limerick Many scholars have attempted to address the absence of a left-led government in Ireland. But this focus on left-wing failure has meant that the unusual electoral focus of the two largest Trotskyist parties in Ireland, the Socialist Workers’ Network (SWN) and the Socialist…
Professor Brian Girvin, School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Glasgow. I convened a seminar at the National University of Ireland, Merrion Square, on June 18, 2026. The seminar was made possible thanks to generous funding from the PSAI and the provision of facilities by the NUI. My fellow participants and I are grateful…
Professor Tom Turner, Department of Work and Employment Studies, University of Limerick. Ireland is relatively unique in a European context in the absence of an established right-wing populist party with anti-immigrant policies and representation in the national parliament (the Dáil) despite having a sizeable immigrant population with a greater number of immigrants per 1000 inhabitants…
Professor Iain McMenamin, Dublin City University The Irish Times recently reported that Sinn Féin’s Northern Ireland branch received €41,000 from friends of Sinn Féin in the US. It has also received large bequests from UK residents: 3.35m stg until the end of 2023. Neither type of income would be legal in (southern) Ireland. Other parties…
The PSAI Public Policy Specialist Group held its annual workshop on Friday 15 May at the National University of Ireland, Dublin, bringing together researchers from across Ireland to discuss their work on public policy and policymaking. The workshop was organised under the auspices of the PSAI’s Public Policy Specialist Group and featured three thematic panels:…
Dr. Rory Costello is an Associate Professor in the Department of Politics & Public Administration at the University of Limerick. He is Director of WhichCandidate.ie and is a member of the Management Board of the National Election and Democracy Study. Across many developed countries, women have tended to be more left-leaning than men for several decades now…
Muiris MacCarthaigh is Professor of Politics and Public Policy and Director of the Centre for Public Policy and Administration at Queen’s University Belfast. This blog draws from an article published in 2023 in Irish Political Studies titled ‘Public policy accumulation in Ireland: the changing profile of ministerial departments 1922–2022’. As another coalition government takes shape,…
Alex Richardson is a Ph.D. candidate at the School of Religion, Trinity College Dublin whose research focuses on novel forms of multi-gendered, intersectional peacebuilding. On Friday 6 December, a group of academics, activists, and peace and security practitioners met at Trinity College Dublin, the University of Dublin, for a workshop that explored how we can…
Dr. Rory Costello is an Associate Professor in the Department of Politics & Public Administration at the University of Limerick and is a member of the Management Board of the National Election and Democracy Study. Most observers believe that the dramatic decline in support for Sinn Féin over the past year, and particularly during the…
Dr Valesca Lima is an Assistant Professor of Politics at Dublin City University’s School of Law and Government. The PSAI and PSA Participatory and Deliberative Democracy Specialist Groups held a one-day conference on August 9th, 2024 entitled “Cross-border Transformations: Deliberation and Participation in Constitutional Politics”. Hosted at the Geary Institute at University College Dublin, the…
The Irish Policy Agendas Project held a workshop this week, bringing together researchers using and generating Irish policy agendas data, developing plans for new policy agendas projects, and studying policy agenda-setting in other ways. The workshop was supported by the PSAI’s Public Policy Specialist Group through the PSAI’s Specialist Group Funding scheme, and the NUI…
As noted here a couple of weeks ago, it’s debateable whether Ireland complies with the requirement in EU law that MEPs are to be elected using a system of proportional representation (PR), be that a list system or PR-STV. At present 25 countries use some kind of list system, while Ireland and Malta employ PR-STV.…
Dr Alexander Dukalskis is an Associate Professor in UCD’s School of Politics and International Relations (SPIRe). The PSAI International Relations and Area Studies Specialist Group recently helped support a conference on Ireland-China relations. The event, held on May 23rd, was a collaboration between the UCD Centre for Asia-Pacific Research and the University of Notre Dame’s Clingen…
By Michael Gallagher The plethora of candidates for the European Parliament elections due in Ireland on 7 June raises the question of whether the country is using the most appropriate method of electing its MEPs. With 23 candidates in Dublin and South, and 27 in Midlands–North-West, voters will be faced with a disconcertingly lengthy ballot…
