Posted by Matt Wall. Gay Mitchell’s article in this morning’s Irish Times again raises the issue of Oireachtas reform. While the text of the article focuses on the development of the office of the Comptroller and Auditor General, Mitchell lays out 7 steps that he feels would improve parliamentary oversight writ large. I would love…
Adrian Kavanagh 23 September 2010 Latest Red C Poll figures, to be published in tomorrow’s (24 October) Sunday Business Post – Fianna Fail 18% (down 6%), Fine Gael 32% (up 1%), LAB 27% (up 4%), Green Party 4% (up 1%), Sinn Fein 9% (down 1%), Independents/Other small parties 10% (up 2%) On these figures, my constituency level…
Posted by David Farrell (written by James Gilmour) Following the financial crisis, demonstrations and riots outside the Parliament (Althingi), early elections in April 2009, and a significant change of government, the Icelandic Parliament voted on 16 June 2010 to set up a directly elected Constitutional Assembly “for the purpose of reviewing the Constitution of the…
A new Fine Gael policy document appears to be in the pipeline according to The Irish Times. It is said to include a slimmed-down civil service, a new cabinet minister for public sector reform and the abolition of the HSE “in its current form”. Under Fine Gael proposals, all Departments and agencies would openly compete…
Many people seem to believe that a cross party consensus on a four-year economic plan is a good thing. While agreement that the budget needs to brought back towards balance is positive, demanding agreement on the policies necessary to get there is nonsense. What we need is an election and a government that has a…
Adrian Kavanagh, 15th October 2010 When electoral boundaries were being redrawn for City abd County Council electoral areas in 2008, the terms of reference set for the two electoral area committees were changed so that, apart from exceptional cases, the minimum number of seats per electoral area would now be four, and not three as…
Citizens’ Assemblies and Political Reform Speaker: Prof. Kenneth Carty, University of British Columbia, Canada Date: Monday 18 October 2010 – 6 to 8 pm Venue: Trinity Long Room Hub, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin 2 The Oireachtas Joint Committee on the Constitution has just recommended that Ireland create a Citizens’ Assembly to consider electoral reform. But…
By Matthew Wall I’ve been doing some research work with my colleague Maria Laura Sudulich on political gambling markets in the UK and Ireland. We’ve been looking recently at whether they can be used to produce more reliable seat forecasts for UK general elections than vote intention polls (thus far, we’ve found that polls produced…
Adrian K avanagh, 8th October 2010 There has been increasing talk in recent times about the need for a national government, but also increasing reticence on the part of the opposition parties. Not surprising, as this would be a Fianna Fail dominated administration – the Dail arithmetic being such that Fianna Fail could push their own agenda more and…
Posted by David Farrell The Martin McEvoy Annual Seminar Series 2010 is entitled Politics, Participation and Power – Civil Society and Public Policy in Ireland. This year’s series will examine the role of civil society in public policy formulation. The seminars will be held in the Bea Orpen Building in Dublin City University on at…
Irish Politics Forum 