By Rory Costello, University of Limerick Government formation is not just a numbers game. Political parties campaign to a large part on policy, and we must assume that people who vote for a party do so as an endorsement of those policies. If we view the new Dáil as representative of the spread of views…
Guest Post By Daniel Sullivan In this piece, I’m going to try to outline two of the problems in how the electoral system currently functions, coupled with some of the practical realities that accompany them, and then suggest two forms of electoral change that would actually address those problems. These problems and from which almost…
Beijing’s response to the award of the Nobel Peace Price to a leading Chinese dissident tells us something important about the country’s transition By Joern-Carsten Gottwald, Neil Collins and Andrew Cottey For the first time in the history of the Nobel Peace Prize a citizen of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) was awarded this…
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…
Elsewhere on this site the full text of Lucinda Creighton’s speech to Magill is produced. However, there are no comment faculties there and given the importance of some of what she said I thought I would link it here for comments. She is obviously disillusioned but makes some interesting points. In particular she points to…
John Considine and Theresa Reidy University College Cork The Department of Finance has set out its mission statement in very broad terms. Its role is ‘To support the achievement of the Government’s economic and social objectives by promoting a sound, sustainable economic and budgetary environment, continuing improvements in the efficiency of public services, and an…
Irish Politics Forum 