On 16 November 2016, there will be a one-day workshop looking at voting rights reform in Ireland. There will be two areas of focus; voting rights for emigrants and reducing the voting age to 16. The programme includes academics and campaigners. The workshop will take place in the offices of the National University of Ireland…
A (still very preliminary) reaction to the Programme for Government proposal that was launched this afternoon (available here). There is a lot of food for thought here. A lot of interesting proposals – at least on paper – and also some daft ones. Certainly a lot to chew over. A fair bit of things that…
In the light of the marriage equality and presidential age referendums last week – both the product of recommendations of the Constitutional Convention, a review of the current state of play of government responses to the Convention’s recommendations is timely. The attached table gives the current situation as of today: ICC recommendations as of May 2015
Posted by David Farrell, January 1, 2015 When the government established the Irish Constitutional Convention it committed to providing a response to Dáil Éireann within four months of receipt of a Convention’s report. That this commitment is no longer being adhered to is a matter of some regret. But at least there have been responses…
Declaration of interest: The author is the research director of the Irish Constitutional Convention The Irish Constitutional Convention has almost completed its work. At its most recent meeting it dealt with the last of the eight topics assigned to it by the Government. All that remains is for the Convention to use its remaining time…
Declaration of interest: I am one of the members of the academic team advising the constitutional convention on its work programme. The Irish Constitutional Convention is most of the way through its work programme. Many journalists and other commentators were critical of the Convention when it was launched. But among those who have witnessed its…
Post by David Farrell (July 11 2011) A re-reading of the Coalition Government’s Programme for Government is timely. It’s worth taking stock of the political reform proposals that have been implemented, those that are on going, and those that are (firmly) promised. There has been some undoubted progress, but a lot – a lot –…
post by David Farrell (July 11, 2011) It’s a pity that the media gave scant if any coverage to an important speech by the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform at a Labour party meeting on July 2. The full text of Brendan Howlin’s speech is here.
A topic that emerged rather unexpectedly from the We the Citizens event that I attended in June was the importance of civic education. At my table, the argument for focusing attention on this topic was that citizens need to be politically well-informed in order to understand the powers of political offices and the consequences of …
From Jane Suiter Reformcard – the political reform scorecard developed for election 2011 – has scored all the political parties. We evaluated each Parties’ proposals in five categories of political reform – Oireachtas reform, Electoral reform, Open Government reform, Public Sector reform and Local Government reform. Details on each are set out below.
Irish Politics Forum 