Posted by Theresa Reidy (UCC) Fine Gael launched its campaign to abolish the Seanad last week and this week, we finally got the date for the referendum. Political reform is back in the headlines and set to take up a reasonable chunk of the airtime during silly season. Seanad abolition is one of the central…
Elaine Byrne, University of New South Wales: 23 July 2013 It is with no small irony that the Minister with responsibility for Small Business consented yesterday to a judgment for €2.47m against him and his wife at the Commercial Court over unpaid loans. John Perry’s long-running difficulties with Danske Bank raise underlying questions about Ireland’s ethics framework…
Post by Mary C. Murphy, University College Cork The 2011 Irish general election produced an exceptionally high level of turnover of TDs. 76 or 45% of the current 166 Dáil members were never TDs before. This represents the first time since 1923 that a majority of those elected did not belong to the previous Dáil.
For those of us who have been following the progress of Ireland’s constitutional convention, tomorrow promises to be an important date. According to the Dáil’s schedule of business, the Department of the Environment Community and Local Government will be providing a statement on the Convention’s first report tomorrow afternoon/evening. While (to the best of my knowledge) no…
And so they’re off! The Fine Gael party today launched their referendum campaign to abolish the Seanad, with Richard Bruton in the driving seat as director of elections for the party and Regina Doherty as his deputy. Having brought this issue to a head, the onus is now firmly on the government, and particularly on…
It now seems a forgone conclusion that Lucinda Creighton will vote against the Fine Gael party whip in the vote on the abortion bill later today or tomorrow. Many of the commentaries on this suggest that this will jeopardize her political career: she will lose her junior ministerial position as Minister for Europe; she will…
The short answer – as we’re about to see in Australia – is that voters have to be issued with magnifying glasses! As Antony Green explains in this clip, the number of parties on the ballot paper for the next Senate election has become so large that the only way a ballot paper can be…
Common to all the discussions about political reform in Ireland is the need to reduce the excessive centralization of power in the executive. In recent posts I’ve examined this from the perspective of Dail reform. This post focuses on the administration of elections in Ireland. A good starting point is this document, which was the…
Guest post by Sarah O’Neill, founder Dailwatch.ie For many, last week’s AngloTapes have reinforced a sense of cynicism in the political system and confirmed their rationale for disengaging from the political process. The conversation between two Anglo’s senior managers suggests that the banks had the upper hand in negotiations with government leaders and reveals an…
The current calls for some form of inquiry into the economic collapse and the government’s response to it are understandable in the light of the Anglo tapes. While they probably didn’t reveal much that we hadn’t already suspected, their tone was abhorrent to most. What is not reasonable is that we concentrate our blame on…
Irish Politics Forum 