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…
The Dáil debated possible new Dáil reforms yesterday. The reforms introduced by the Chief Whip Paul Kehoe are to include: The introduction of Topical Issue Debates to replace the current Adjournment Debates Extra Dáil sitting days – on the first Friday of every month – to provide time for TDs to introduce their own Bills…
Adrian Kavanagh, 20th and 21st July 2011 The Ispos-MRBI polls, published in the July 20th and July 21st editions of The Irish Times offers good news for Fine Gael and David Norris. My constituency level analysis suggest Fine Gael would win just enough seats to form a single party government based on these figures, while analysis…
As ministers prepare to take what will surely seem a well-earned break, they’ll probably be feeling a bit sorry for themselves. The celebrity induced honeymoon hasn’t given way to an economic miracle and the likelihood is that when they come back they will be straight into a fight with Brendan Howlin for money. The argument has been made that…
Post by David Farrell (July 14 2011) Ireland is not alone in considering a reduction in the number of parliamentarians. In the UK the size of the House of Commons is to reduce from 650 to 600. In the Netherlands there is debate over possibly reducing their parliament by a third from 150 members to…
In a recent lecture to the Ditchley Foundation, former UK prime minister John Major calls for political reforms, especially the use of more experts in government and the role of politicians as a mediator between experts and the public. The details of his proposals are a bit unclear, but are discussed in a blog by…
Irish Politics Forum 