Guest Post from Dr. Caroline McEvoy, School of Politics and International Relations, University College Dublin [This post draws on research published in Politics & Gender available here.] 22% of TDs in the 32nd Dáil are women – a result largely attributed to the introduction of gender quotas in the 2016 general election. This is a…
So the United Kingdom has voted to leave the European Union. After much wailing and gnashing of teeth, the EU will see to remove any vestiges of the United Kingdom with as much haste as a fractious domestic separation.Well no, it’s not going to be that simple. First, the United Kingdom does not have a…
The Constitution Unit Blog During the EU referendum debate it has often been asserted that people tend to be risk averse and so vote against change in referendums. But does the evidence justify this claim? Stephen Fisher and Alan Renwick have collected data on over 250 national referendums held since 1990 and found that the change option has won a…
Guest post from Prof Donncha Kavanagh (UCD) donncha.kavanagh@ucd.ie Much media commentary on the general election has been framed around the notion that the Irish parliamentary system should finally rid itself of its Civil War legacy and embrace the Left-Right system of political discourse that befits a modern democracy. However, there are profound weaknesses in this…
Guest post by Jonathan Arlow. In 2013 the Department of Social Protection commissioned a report by Indecon International Economic Consultants to evaluate the effectiveness of the JobBridge internship programme. Given that the minister for Social Protection, Leo Varadkar, has publicly criticised JobBridge and announced that he is expecting a second review by Indecon into the…
With the new government already having suffered its first defeat, we are clearly not in a period of politics as usual in the Oireachtas. This raises the question of whether Ireland’s ‘Triple Lock’ on overseas deployments will take on greater significance in the new Dáil. The ‘Triple Lock’ which entered the political lexicon during the…
Post by Muireann O’Dwyer School of Politics and International Relations, UCD As the dust settles after the publication of the longest ever Programme for Government, it’s a good time to start taking a deeper look at the promises contained within the published plans for the new government. A document born of long negotiation, it is clear…
The sub-committee on Dáil reform published its ‘draft’ final report yesterday and it makes for very pleasurable reading. Among the key proposals are the following: Dáil agenda and order of business to be determined by a new business committee chaired by the Ceann Comhairle; A new and powerful Budget Oversight Committee whose work will be…
One of the side deals done in the attempts to form a government was the idea to send the issue of the 8th amendment to the Constitution to a citizens’ assembly. Convening a convention is a good and practical idea, because it takes issues that politicians can’t agree on off the table. Any suitable issues…
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 we’d…
Irish Politics Forum 