Insofar as the budget goes, this is actually fair enough: you cast your vote, your representatives emerge and your government is formed to govern until the next election. In between, to try to govern by some imagined public consensus, to steer a course by the uncertain stars of opinion poll and Twitter trend, is a receipe for populism and executive paralysis. Our TDs, for well-canvassed psephological reasons, have always inclined to the view that opinions are for voters to express - via Joe Duffy, the Irish Daily Mail and misspelled constituents’ letters - and for parliamentarians to run with. But the baying of the mob is not a sound basis for good governance.

Irish public figures could have benefitted over the years from listening more closely to one of their illustrious forebears, Edmund Burke, whose Speech to the Electors of Bristol remains the classic statement of the MP’s right and duty to be guided by his own, informed opinion, even if this conflicts with the express wishes of his electorate. A little more aloof paternalism might have brought a crop of TDs more willing to challenge the doomed consensus that helped inflate the bubble.

But this can only go so far, and the Irish Times (naturally) would take judicious flouting of the popular will beyond the Pale. Stephen Collins, discussing the ramifications of a eurozone exit, makes the following extraordinary statement:

“Over the next few months, if all goes well, there will be agreement at EU level to a series of binding budgetary disciplines. This will probably require treaty change and, even though that may result in a bitter referendum, it is very much in Ireland’s interest that it happens. In the long run, such a development will ensure the Irish people will be saved from a repeat of the economic indiscipline and political incompetence that characterised the Bertie Ahern years.”

Now, the government led by Bertie Ahern may well have been indisiplined and incompetent. But the implication of this passage is that submitting our financial affairs to the scrutiny and (possible) veto of the EU is the best – perhaps only - way to avoid a repeat meltdown ”in the long run”. The future financial policy of any Irish government is presented as a ticking timebomb.

This presupposes a complete inability of Irish people to run their own country properly. In effect, Collins would have us transfer significant new powers – amounting perhaps to a complete and permanent surrender of economic sovereignty – to the EU, not because this serves the greater good, but because, left to ourselves, we’ll only bugger it up.

It’s a sinister implication, anti-democratic and cynical. A country cannot realistically be governed by popular will alone, but nor can it be legitimately governed by giving up on representative democracy and handing the hard decisions over to centralised European control. 

Even if we shrug aside these fundamental objections, it’s hard to say whether or not we would be better off in or out of a new, financially integrated eurozone. Certainly, as Collins notes, attempting to pay off our load of euro-demoninated debt in some devalued punt nua would be extremely costly, and therefore exiting the euro would have to happen simultaneously with another radical move: default on sovereign debt, à la Argentina in 2002.

As I noted at the outset, these arguments are complex, and if such are the stark choices that are going to emerge out of this week’s discussions, politics isn’t going to get any simpler for a while yet. I would simply hope that our decisions flow freely, not from fear of our own inherent incompetence.

Has the Irish Presidential election been decided by a lie and the media’s unquestioning belief of it? Why did the Sunday Independent wait until after the election – when the media darling was safely ensconced in the Aras – before revealing what they knew?

What the Sunday Independent now calls SF’s “dirty tricks campaign” may yet end up backfiring on the party in the courts. Under “The Prevention of Electoral Abuses Act, 1923″:

Every person who, before or during any election and for the purpose of affecting the return of any candidate at that election, makes or publishes any false statement of fact in relation to the personal character or conduct of such candidate, and the directors of any body or association corporate which before or during any election and for the purpose aforesaid makes or publishes any such false statement as aforesaid, shall be guilty of an illegal practice.”

SINN Fein Presidential candidate Martin McGuinness is the main suspect in the brutal murder of two policemen, the Herald can reveal.

Sergeant Peter Gilgunn (26) and Constable David Montgomery (20), were gunned down in an IRA ambush as they travelled in an RUC patrol car in Derry.

They were the first police officers to lose their lives in a terrorist incident in the city for 50 years.

The ambush 40 years ago came just three days before Bloody Sunday sent shockwaves right across the Province.
….

The claims further calls SF’s credibility into question hours before the polls open in the Presidential Election. The revelation comes after McGuiness altered his account of Sean Gallagher’s alleged contacts with businessman and former convicted fuel-smuggler and former tax-evader Hugh Morgan.

Sinn Fein’s allegations linking Gallagher to a cheque for €5,000 for FF have been undermined following the revelations that the accuser has convictions for cross-border fuel-smuggling and tax-evasion and leased his General Election HQ to Gerry Adams. On Tonight with Vincent Brown it was reported that SF has now revealed his identity as Hugh Morgan. In February 2011, the Irish Mail on Sunday reported that Morgan plead guilty to fuel smuggling and tax-evasion in 1998, receiving an 18-month suspended sentence, and being required to pay €500,000 in excise duties and €25,000 in Prosecution costs.

SINN Féin president Gerry Adams is renting his election campaign HQ from the family firm of a convicted crossborder fuel smuggler, the Irish Mail on Sunday can reveal.
Festooned with posters of the Dáil hopeful, and flying the tricolour from the second storey, the office – above Gormley’s Pub in Park Street, Dundalk – is in a building belonging to Morgan Fuels Ireland Limited, owned by Hugh Morgan.

Newry businessman Morgan pleaded guilty to fuel smuggling and tax evasion at Belfast Crown Court in June 1998. He received a suspended 18-month jail sentence. He paid £500,000 in excise duties and VAT and was ordered to pay £25,000 prosecution costs.

But when Mr Adams was asked about Mr Morgan’s criminal convictions, he laughed them off, saying: ‘You’re great, great craic.’ He then claimed he didn’t know who Sinn Féin was renting the office space from and said he didn’t know Mr Morgan personally.

He said the lease was ‘a totally bona fide legal contract between Sinn Féin and the owner of the building… sin é, that’s it’.

When asked if Mr Morgan was any relation to departing Louth TD Arthur Morgan, Mr Adams said: ‘I wouldn’t say so,’ and joked: ‘But there’s Morgan’s rum now. It’s spice rum – especially, it’s very nice with Coca-Cola and a twist of lemon.’ Speaking during a canvass in mid-Louth, he then turned to his three aides and asked them: ‘Is Morgan’s Fuel any connection to wee Arthur?’

The revelations threaten to backfire on the McGuinness campaign just as false allegations against Mary Harney in relation to the Flood Tribunal did on Magill Magazine in 2002.

“Putting the country first may well mean we would be better in opposition, by far….People feel it is going to be hard to drive the government and that, therefore, the people we represent might be better protected by leading the opposition.

“I think there is a strong view along those lines.”

Broughan is the first high-profile TD to publicly oppose a Coalition, though Labour Youth President Colm Lawless Councillor Cian O’Callaghan, Blanchardstown Councillor Patrick Nulty and the UNITE union have also come out against:

“”I’ve been talking to Labour party members across the country, grassroots members, councillors, and I’m also aware that a number of TDs in the party have some strong reservations about the potential for a Fine Gael-led government,” the Howth/Malahide councillor said.

“You can be absolutely certain that you’re going to see a very strong, vigorous and healthy debate on Sunday and we’ll wait to see what the outcome is.” (Cian O’Callaghan)

“I fear that Labour’s influence will be minuscule and that we are about to allow Fine Gael a free reign on introducing harsh austerity measures which will hit ordinary people hardest..I fear that Labour’s influence will be minuscule and that we are about to allow Fine Gael a free reign on introducing harsh austerity measures which will hit ordinary people hardest,” said the Trinity College Dublin student.

“Fine Gael do not rely on Labour to remain in office and this is a serious concern…In the case of not holding a balance of power it is wise for us to remain in opposition.”

Mr O’Callaghan said four TDs had personally expressed their opposition to him about a prospective coalition.

“Unite has campaigned during this general election for a Labour-led left government…We were promoting that our members would vote for the Labour Party; we wanted Eamon Gilmore as taoiseach.” (Jimmy Kelly, UNITE Regional Secretary)

“If a programme for government is put to Labour members, I believe we should reject it and instead put the country first and push for . . . transformation in our political system” (Councillor Patrick Nulty)

“Meanwhile, Labour Party MEP Proinsias De Rossa has said his party should be prepared to go into Opposition.

In a statement, Mr De Rossa said that Labour should defend the interests of its core constituency – low and middle-income earners – by having key elements of its social democratic policies implemented.

He said that if Fine Gael did not accept these requirements, Labour should not enter a Coalition.” (RTE)

Meanwhile, FG’s Immigration and Integration Spokesperson Lucinda Creighton has called for the party to sound out Independent TDs as her supporters were rejecting Labour, “higher taxes” and “going soft on cuts”:

“People voting for me and voting for my colleagues were coming from Fianna Fáil and PD backgrounds. They were voting against Labour and against higher taxes and going soft on cuts. We will be punished if we were to say we would not try to see if there were other viable alternatives”

Creighton’s stance comes amid tensions over the next occupant of the Department of Finance and contrasts with FG Grandees who have largely dismissed a deal with “flakey” Independents. This is in spite of a public offer from Dublin South poll-topper Shane Ross TD for an agreement with up to 8 Independent TDs. Among Independents who might be prepared to support a FG-minority government are Noel Grealish (publicly pledged for vote for Kenny as a “West of Ireland” Taoiseach, former FG TD Michael Lowry, Michael Healy-Rae, former FF TD Tom Fleming, Luke “Ming” Flanagan (who claims to agree with many FG policies), Stephen Donnelly (backed by David McWilliams in Wicklow), former FF TD Mattie McGrath and Shane Ross. Neither of these constitute part of the Leftist-bloc of ULA or SP Independents. An alliance with FG would produce 84 seats and allow FG to reward impressive performers who played a decisive role in shaping policy and building the foundations for the party’s spectacular gains which have made the party – for the first time in Irish political history – the largest in the State. A Coalition with Labour, in constrast, is likely to require the sacrifice of up to 6 Cabinet seats – possibly including the ‘Holy Grail’ of the Department of Finance. With double the seat numbers of Labour, the surrender of the most powerful position at the Cabinet (arguably more so in a Coalition than that of Taoiseach) would raise the spectre of a repeat of the unpopular 1982-7 FG-Labour Government where the senior party was abandoned en masse in the succeeding General Election as conservative and libertarian FG voters defected to the PDs, depriving the party of one-quarter of its vote and consigning it to 22 years (consecutive apart from an interlude in 1992-4) to the political-wilderness.

Any Coalition agreement will have to be ratified by Labour’s Special Delegate Conference and by FG TDs and Senators. Unions will have 10% of the votes while Labour Youth will havd 45 votes at the conference.

This is the quite time for Irish politics. The media moratorium to allow people to make their minds up just before the Dail elections. And this has been an unusual election campaign for a number of reasons. The one that I want to talk about is the comments canvassers made; this time people want to talk to the TDs about national and not local issues. Usually TD have to look in to every pothole (sometimes literally), and if they aren’t seen to be doing a lot at the local level, then they become ex-TDs come the next election. This is a problem.

The Seanad on the other hand has a national view. Of its three sections one of them have even be a de-facto international view.

Their problem is that the Seanad is seen as a resting ground for failed TDs and a grooming ground for future TD. In short, political daycare.

The fix; trim the fat off.

The Seanad is split in to 3 selections/elections. The 6 University Senators, the 49 Panel Senators and the 11 Appointed Senators.

The University Senators are elected in a postal vote by graduates from the NUI colleges and The University of Dublin (better known as Trinity College), 3 from each set. As its a postal vote, there are anecdotes of parents posting the voting forms off to their emigrant children. These are the only diaspora votes. These guys have to work hard to get elected. They have to be seen working hard. Ask any Irish person to name some senators and you will get the university senators named back at you (or Ivor Callely due to the scandal and court dates). These are the people who should have their presence expanded.

Actually the University Senators were supposed to be expanded over 10 20 years ago (see correction in the comments). The University of Limerick and Dublin City University were supposed to be electing senators, but the committee for Seanad Reform blocked every attempt to change things. I seriously believe that is the initial reason for the referendum. Any attempt to change things has been consistently blocked until a Callely related crisis point was reached.

And as a DCU graduate, I want my vote!

These senators are usually non-party affiliated, which means the whips from the main Dail parties can’t actually get them to follow the party line to the letter.

I would suggest not only keeping these senators, but expanding them. And if whatever Taoiseach decides their new (if any) legal existence, remember these guys have the country’s back. If an extreme reduction is needed then have the Seanad consist of only the university Senators.

The 49 Panel Senators however… well. I think I need to explain how they get their jobs.

There are 5 Vocational Panels in the Senate; Administrative (including public administration), Agricultural (including food), Cultural and Educational (and the Irish language), Industrial and Commercial (including technology) and Labour. These senators are “elected” by county and city councils as well as incoming TDs. I use the quotes around “elected” as all of this happens behind closed doors. While I’m sure that there are a few arguments along the way, its not a transparent system, and it tends to pick party Senators who quietly work with the whip with no apparent qualifications for their panel appointments.

These are the ones I would like to see changed with a nice bright light shone on them.

What would I propose? Well…

First split the country in to 5 Senatorial electoral regions based on population. For the sake of convenience I’ll go with North, South East, West and Dublin (very “All Ireland Talent Show”, sorry). These regions will hold public elections at the same time as the fixed term local elections (thus keeping the link to the city and county councils) but with the following rules.

1. A prospective Senator has to select on which panel she or he seeks election.
2. A prospective Senator cannot seek election to more than one panel per election.
3. A prospective Senator cannot seek a seat in the Local elections the same time (s)he is seeking election to the Seanad.
4. Each region elects a single Senator for each panel position. (5 senators per region).
5. A Senate seat cannot be left unfilled for more than 6 months. Either an automatic by-election is called or, if the next local election is less than 18 months from the Senators departure from the seat, a temporary Senator can be appointed by the councils in the region and their reasons for the appointment must be published and read as part of the new Senator’s maiden speech. (Something which should be considered for TDs too. That ticking clock tends to get things done too).

This has a few benefits.

• Its now a risk to become a Senator if you are grooming someone from the councils. They can’t go back to their existing seat.
• Its an open election, the public can vote.
• While they are seeking election to a region, its large enough to prevent (or at least limit) parish pump politics.
• As the prospective Senator has to declare which panel they are running for, its closer to a job interview. Hopefully the public will elect the person they feel is most suited for the post in their area.

Hopefully.

This does make the process open and it reduces the number of Senators by almost 50%. There will be some cost savings in having combining the elections, and having part of the Senate sitting when the rest of the Oireachtas is dissolved means that there is some consistency of power. One clear problem is the cost of campaigning to such a large area gives the organised parties an advantage over independents.

And finally we have the 11 Senators appointed by the Taoiseach.

To the victor go some spoils. Its original purpose was to ensure that the incoming government has some control over the Senate (and build in minority presence) but since my proposal is to reduce the Panel seats, I’d like to reduce these appointees too.

The Panel of 5 compels an elegant solution. The Taoiseach’s appointees are reduced to 5; one for each panel. He (so far they have all been men) must declare which panel each is being appointed to. Hopefully there will be some logic to this appointments, but I can see the Public administration appointee being a recently felled comrade in party.

There is one final requirement needed for a reformed Seanad. A method to remove Senators. I would think a motion for removal requiring 75% for the other Senators would be a reasonable and clear-cut method. With the reduced numbers a party whip system shouldn’t be able to force this issue, and there should be no party whip permitted for such a motion for removal.

Of course, for any of this to happen you’ll first have to seek a referendum on…

• Articles 14.2, 15.2, all of articles 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, and 24.
• Articles 25.2, 25.3
• Most of 26,
• 27.1
• 28.7.2
• 31.2
• 33.5 and 35.4
• and the 7th Amendment of the Irish Constitution. (PDF link, sorry)

Thanks to John Handelaar for compiling this constitutional list.

In short, Seanad reform is well overdue. Given the recent history of Seanad Reform, it will probably have to be torn down (in the legal sense) in order for any changes to be made. But given the recent history of the lower chamber of the Dail, is needed.

Should the Dail become a true national concern and is treated as such by all the TD’s, then maybe the Seanad won’t be a requirement, but for the moment; its needed.

First posted on WillKnott.ie

Joe, my colleague, came to me three weeks ago with an idea that was too good – and too simple – not to pursue. We should approach the leading political scientists in the country and ask them to rank political parties’ committments to reform before he election. More than that – we should show the parties the a criteria for best practice before they had completed their manifestos, so that a) they would know how they were going to be ranked, and b) so that they could incorporate some of these reform areas right away. Here is a blog post where we laid out the initial proposal and plan of action.

In the three weeks since then we have started to work with eight of the country’s leading political scientists drawn from politics.ie. We are also growing a community of volunteer web devs, designers, and data visualisers. Yesterday, we launched at www.reformcard.com.

It seems inevitable to me – based on my experience writing my recent A history of the Internet and the digital future – that we are going to have more and better tools for political decision making. This is our attempt to build one such tool. Connecting to Reset Ireland was the first step in this process, and we have really great volunteers who are associated with the 091 hacker space in Galway. The idea that I have, which builds on Joe’s, is to build the first steps toward better online, crowd-powered, evaluation of reform implementation over the life of the next government.

The academic panel (Dr Elaine Byrne, TCD; Prof David Farrell, UCD; Dr Clodagh Harris, UCC; Dr Eoin O’Malley, DCU; Prof Gary Murphy, DCU; Dr Theresa Reidy, UCC; Dr Jane Suiter, UCC; Mr Matt Wall, University of Amsterdam ) are independently scoring each party’s manifesto according to its commitment to reform in 5 key areas: legislative, electoral, local, open government, and the public sector.

The total score a party can achieve is 100 ( 5 areas x 5 specific indicators in each area x 4 maximum score for each indicator). Our intention is to use this system to give offer a simple metric for each party’s commitment to reform.

In the next stage, once the next government is in, there focus will shift toward monitoring. Lost expectation has a great demonstration of what this could look like. We need to build our community of researchers and coders to build a system that allows users to alert us on the latest developments. This would mean that the academic panel would be kept up to date with new information (e.g. progression of legislation) so that it can score the government’s performance to hold it to account. It would also mean
that the public would have a go to resource for shared political data in addition to the ongoing scoring provided by the academic panel. So this is a call for any one with an interest in a) policy, and/or b) coding, to join us!

The under representation of a group of people has been the basis of many a political up rising. Most notably French Revolution where the

third estate feeling that they wereunder-represented at the estates general broke away from the meeting and took the tennis court oath. Thus starting the French revolutionand the end of the power of the first 2 estates. The first 2 estates consisting of the church and nobility were dictating laws on taxation that the 3rd estate (professionals basically) had to endure a proportionally greater share.

So here we had the case where the under-represented 3rd estate were being told by the over –represented nobility what to do. Clearly the case was that the nobility could not represent the non-nobility. Just as the Ascendency Grattens parliament could not represent the “native” Irish. So when we look at the idea of under-representation of women in the Dail in the context of history we have to answer the following question.

Can men represent women, or indeed can women represent men.

If indeed theanswer is yes, then women are not under-represented in parliament. As a male TD can serve the needs of a male constituent as well as a female constituent. If the answer to that question is no. Then we have a situation that states that men can not represent women and women cannot represent men.

So by definition men can’t elect women and women can’t elect men and thus we would require gender specific ballot papers. Robbing us of the idea that we are a democracy that elects citizens to represent citizens, instead having a genderocracy.

Now of course the use of the word under-represented is used out of context by proponents of gender quotes. When really what they mean is that the Dail is unrepresentative. This of course means that women and men are entirely represented by their TD regardless of gender but that the Dail is not fully representative of the societal make up of modern Ireland.This is indeed true the Dail is not, but this is not an effect solely effecting women. The make up of the Dail does not represent much insociety. Travellers, homosexuals, muslims, immigrants , women, disabled, under 30s, single mothers, early school leavers etc etc. All these groups and probably more do not have the number of TD’s in proportion to their societal numbers. When issues that effect women are debated such as the ceverical cancer vaccine while there is not 83 females to weight in on the issue there are some. Compare this to the debates on the citizenship referendum where no one of an immigrant back ground was present to argue their case . Which of course veers back into the suggestion that citizens can only be represented by people from their same backgrounds. But considering that their is more that defines our experience in society then gender or country of birth covering all experiences of society would require 4 million debuties,

By introducing gender quotes we are effectively suggesting that the fact the Dail is not representative of female of a bad thing needing correction, but the non statistically accuracy of the Dail in other categories is something not in need of correction and condoned. The Dail should be considered to be citizens elected by citizens while more female, gay, traveller, disabled etc  TD’s would be nice anything that puts a proviso on the word citizen does not increase democracy it decreases it.

Yet within an hour of the Taoiseach’s unscheduled Thursday statement to the Dail (Thursday being his privilege day regarding Dail appearances), the website had up this portion of his remarks –

The Government has obtained approval for its National Recovery Plan, provided a proper funding of the State through their negotiation of the EU-IMF package. It will give us the time and space to continue on a path of adjustment to restore economic growth and thereby create jobs and it will allow us to bring our public finances back to order while providing necessary public services to our people.

There is absolutely zero news content to those remarks.  There is no new approval or announcement and it sells the IMF/EU package as an achievement and not the culmination of 2.5 years of attempting to avoid exactly that outcome.   With an election date now announced, you’d hope that a period of purdah would now cover official government information sources.  They’re off to a bad start.