Eamon Gilmore’s uplitfting ‘One Ireland’ speech to his party conference (http://bit.ly/crTAaq) this weekend ended with a set of interesting proposals for political, public sector and constitutional reform, with some pretty novel ideas such as the one to establish a Department of Public Service Reform. The major plus was just how many of the issues that…
Here’s a link to Fine Gael’s reform proposals in 1985. It was pretty limited in ambition, but interestingly most of what they debated was introduced and to little effect. Presumably at the time these were thought to be somewhat radical. Which may go to show that changes don’t always have the effects we expect.
There is a practice for UK prime ministers to be asked in the Commons about their engagements that day before the supplementary questions would come in and start asking them what really was meant to happen. It always seemed to me to be an odd tradition and I couldn’t find or see the logic to…
By Gary Murphy Harry McGee the political correspondent of the Irish Times had a very interesting article in Saturday’s paper Irish political lobbying: who’s who and how does it work In it he notes that despite the current government pledging in its revised programme for government to introduce a register for lobbyists, so far there…
[Given to Political Reform in Ireland Conference, University College Cork, 26th March 2010] If the appetite for political reform emerged as a result of the economic crisis, then we should probably look at what caused the crisis. Power within the political system is centralised to government. It was government decisions that got us here, so…
Some interesting discussion in the Fruits and Votes blog, which among other things argues that my call for a smaller Dail is off the mark – http://bit.ly/dnDCDQ
by Michael Marsh, TCD Micheal Martin admitted on RTE today that an election now would devastate FF if current poll estimates proved to be accurate. At the same time, perhaps paradoxically, speculation about the likelihood of a collapse in the government’s Dáil support seems to have intensified. While Green support looks more firm as their…
[The following is an edited summary of my remarks to the Political Reform conference, hosted by University College Cork, March 26 2010.] It is good to see that political reform is now on the agenda of some of our political leaders. More and more people are calling for large-scale political reform, with an ever-growing list…
The reshuffle on Monday underwhelmed most observers, partly because Brian Cowen had given indications that there’d be a major overhaul of government. New faces would be introduced, old, tired names dropped and this would reinvigorate the government in the lead into the next election. There was supposed to be a new dawn. Reshuffles are not…
POLITICAL REFORM IN IRELAND Friday, 26th March 2010 Council Room, North Wing University College Cork Conference Programme 10.00 –10.15 Registration Tea and Coffee 10.15 – 10.30 Conference Opening Prof Neil Collins – University College Cork 10:30 –12:30: Session One Reform Please! Chair: Noel Whelan – The Irish Times Lord Mayor of Cork, Cllr Dara Murphy…
Irish Politics Forum 