Motions for debate

The Rathmines branch is semi-famous for proposing motions to annual conference that get ignored by the DSE constituency council under some section of standing orders. To be absolutely sure that the CC have to at least consider our proposed motion this year we have started the ball rolling already. At the branch meeting on Monday the following three topics were put forward

1. Implementation of the Kenny report
2. Lowering voting age to 16 and extending franchise in General Elections
3. Secularisation of the education system

The first refers to the report written by Justice Kenny in the early 70s which proposed limits on speculation on land. This report has been ignored by every government since its publication. Had it been implemented in full it can be argued that the property bubble of 1999-2007 would never have happened. While it is still good policy, I'm of the opinion that it is a bit like closing the barn door after the horse has bolted. I also think that implementing Kenny is already party policy and so a motion on it might be a bit of a waste.

The second motion is in two parts. Firstly it proposes that we follow Austria and parts of Germany in lowering the voting age to 16 and secondly to allow all EU citizens normally resident in the state to vote in General Elections. I have blogged on this before so no need to go into much detail here except to say no taxation without representation and no representation without taxation.

The third motion proposed that the state finally takes control of all eduction that is funded by the tax payer. This arose from two different issues, firstly the additional grants given to minority religious schools, the second to stop the practice of rejecting children from local national schools because they haven't been baptised in the Catholic church in favour of those that have. The debate was fairly heated at times and no wording was agreed on but it looks likely that some motion on this topic will be forwarded to the CC for consideration as the Constituency motion to conference in April.