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…
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
The government launched its new diaspora policy last week – Global Irish – in which it applauded itself on its diaspora policy. Lots of warm words waft throughout the 57-page glossy document. But buried in the detail is a confirmation (on p. 21) that the government has chosen to ignore the recommendation of the Irish…
Post by Richard Humphreys SC In order to offer a ‘workable’ reform that they claim could be on the statute books by Christmas the Quinn/ Zapponne Seanad Reform Bill makes a lot of compromises. Due to the constitutional limitations on what can and cannot be changed by an ordinary bill, the Zappone/Quinn Bill leaves in…
From Jane Suiter A group of us including Professor Michael Marsh, Dr Theresa Reidy and I along with Red C were commissioned to undertake research following the referendums in November with a view to learning lessons for future referendum campaigns. The report is here and the presentation given to the Oireachtas Committee on Investigations, Oversight…
By Jane Suiter The Irish Times today editorialises on the role of the Presidency. It raises the issues of an expansion of powers of the presidency pointing out that the “President has clear constitutional obligations and duties, few independent functions and can act only on the advice of the government. In 1973, Erskine Childers, in…
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.
The editors and contributors behind polticalreform.ie have teamed with a large volunteer team of project managers, web designers and others to produce ReformCard a measurement tool to rank each party based on the quality of their policies on political reform. We hope this will prove a critical instrument in informing the election 2011 debate. It…
David Farrell (September 22 2010) With so many of our citizens fleeing the country — many of them against their will — and so many of them ending up disenfranchised residents in foreign lands, why should we add insult to injury be denying them a say over affairs at home? The scourge of mass emigration…
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 