By Michael Gallagher The first of these questions seems to have acquired ‘Is the Pope a Catholic?’ status, with apparent unanimity that the existing nomination requirements are too exacting. To recap, a would-be presidential candidate must secure the nominations of either (a) 20 members of the Houses of the Oireachtas (TDs and Senators), or (b)…
Adrian Kavanagh, 4th September 2011 The Sunday Times/Behaviour & Attitudes opinion poll, published on 4th September offers varying fortunes for the two government parties, amounting to very good news for Fine Gael but dismal fortunes for Labour. My constituency level analysis suggest Fine Gael would win a landslide victory based on these figures if they transpired in an…
Des O’Malley argues in the Irish Times today that the legal system here is in need of reform. He points out that money has now become a decisive factor in determining the outcome of legal disputes. Interestingly he points the finger squarely at the state: “The level of fees seems to percolate from the top.…
Last week The Irish Times published the late Peter Mair’s excellent speech at MacGill this year (about 30 minutes in). Mair argued that the problem in Ireland is that we don’t respect our State. We have never respected our State. We have never had a sense of belonging for our State. If anything we have…
I recall studying the Enlightenment in West European history and being fascinated by Diderot’s Encyclopédie project. It was an amazing effort and achievement in its own right, but can really only be understood in the broader context of Enlightement goals and values, perhaps best explained by Kant in his essay: ‘An Answer to the Question:…
A very interesting article in today’s Irish Times discusses whether Europe should focus on education in its engagement with Africa. The article argues that political education is vitally important for all sorts of social and political outputs: ‘Individual Africans need to become more politically sophisticated. It is hard to think of a political party in…
Post by David Farrell (August 16 2011) Today I received the awful news that my mentor, colleague and friend, Professor Peter Mair had passed away while on one of his regular family holidays in Ireland. He will be known to many readers of this blog for his writings and speeches on Irish politics (for a…
Post by David Farrell (August 13, 2011) As reported in earlier posts on this blog, this government has made some quite impressive progress on implementing the political reform proposals proposed in its Programme for Government. They’ve made a good start. But, arguably most of this has been the low-hanging fruit, the relatively easy targets. We’ve…
Post by David Farrell (August 2, 2011) Today’s Irish Independent has good coverage of the situation regarding expenses for TDs and Senators. The details of how the ‘unvouched’ system works is usefully explained here; and this article reports on just how much expense have been drawn down by certain members, showing that more than 20%…
Looking on from abroad for most of the campaign, I was amazed at some of the proposals for reform that emerged. Both of the government parties have posted documents detailing these promises on their websites. In my opinion, Labour had one of the most radical political reform policy platforms of the campaign. The key plank…
Irish Politics Forum 