Posted by Elaine Byrne Derek Scally in today’s Irish Times on ‘Ireland needs a national forum for cogent debate.’ In particular he writes about: “Three years on, the country is crying out for meaningful public debate beyond media bun fights and political soundbites. This debate needs a home, a place where civil society and politics…
Posted by Matt Wall. Gay Mitchell’s article in this morning’s Irish Times again raises the issue of Oireachtas reform. While the text of the article focuses on the development of the office of the Comptroller and Auditor General, Mitchell lays out 7 steps that he feels would improve parliamentary oversight writ large. I would love…
Adrian Kavanagh 23 September 2010 Latest Red C Poll figures, to be published in tomorrow’s (24 October) Sunday Business Post – Fianna Fail 18% (down 6%), Fine Gael 32% (up 1%), LAB 27% (up 4%), Green Party 4% (up 1%), Sinn Fein 9% (down 1%), Independents/Other small parties 10% (up 2%) On these figures, my constituency level…
Many people seem to believe that a cross party consensus on a four-year economic plan is a good thing. While agreement that the budget needs to brought back towards balance is positive, demanding agreement on the policies necessary to get there is nonsense. What we need is an election and a government that has a…
Adrian Kavanagh, 15th October 2010 When electoral boundaries were being redrawn for City abd County Council electoral areas in 2008, the terms of reference set for the two electoral area committees were changed so that, apart from exceptional cases, the minimum number of seats per electoral area would now be four, and not three as…
By Matthew Wall I’ve been doing some research work with my colleague Maria Laura Sudulich on political gambling markets in the UK and Ireland. We’ve been looking recently at whether they can be used to produce more reliable seat forecasts for UK general elections than vote intention polls (thus far, we’ve found that polls produced…
Posted by David Farrell Organised by St Patrick’s Cathedral, there will be a symposium on the economics contribution of Jonathan Swift on October 16th: more details here. The Annual Service in commemoration of Swift is on Sunday 17th October at 15.15, at which Dr. Don Thornhill (Chairman of the Competitiveness Council etc) will give an…
The Annual Political Studies Association of Ireland [PSAI] conference will be held this weekend in DIT. Details of programme below and further information here. Of particular note is the roundtable on political reform on Friday: Chair: Professor David Farrell, UCD Speakers: Joan Burton TD, Finance Spokesperson, Labour Party; Dan O’Brien, Economics Editor, Irish Times; Eddie…
Leo Varadkar’s audit of his time Would a different electoral system change anything or would the expectations by the electorate stay the same? Meetings (22%) Correspondence (16%) Media (10%) Paperwork (10%) Dail Chamber and Committee (8%) Travelling (7%) Conferences (7%) Events (7.5%) Phone Calls (5.5%) Canvass (3%) Office (2.5%) Miscellaneous (2%) Clinics and Funerals (0…
1.8 million Australian voters used the ‘early voting’ facility provided by the Australian electoral commission in the three weeks before today’s election to cast their votes, a record number. The Australians also have facilities for voting if a citizen happens to be outside of the electoral district in which they are registered on the day of the election.…
Irish Politics Forum 