Taking a break

I've decided to take a bit of a break from blogging. The last 6 months have been fairly hectic what with the general election and then my own shenanigans with the Seanad election. I've partially burned out on politics and so need to charge up the batteries again. Luckily I'm off on holidays for a few weeks soon which should get me back in the zone. We'll pick up at some point during the silly season.

Just a few minor thoughts on recent topics before I go.

David Norris

The current smear campaign being waged against David Norris is disgusting. When people like John Waters and David Quinn come out supporting the attacks it only makes me more sure that it is a load of dirty tricks. While I will be voting for Michael D Higgins in the Presidential election I am now more certain than ever that Norris will be getting my number 2.

We the Citizens

I went to the We the Citizens event on Wednesday night in Tallaght. While skeptical about anything of great import coming from the events it was good to have a round table discussion with a group of strangers. The event was well organized with a facilitator at each table to keep the conversation on track and make sure it wasn't dominated by a few loud voices.

One thing I think has worked in their favour is the timing. Initially they had hoped to report before the general election in early 2012 but obviously that didn't come to pass. However, with the election there was a sense of the air being cleared and we didn't spend hours giving out about Cowen, Lenihan and the banks. A lot more positive and constructive than it might have been on the original timetable.

Tweet Up

The politics twonks also held a tweetup last Thursday night. As usual, great fun was had debating the ills of the country. It was a bit weird not being on the offensive against the government. Was also nice to meet a few new people as well as the old regulars and there are plans to hold another session towards the end of the summer.

Ignite

On Wednesday this week I'll be giving a talk at the Ignite Dublin session being held in the Science Gallery. These talks are on any topic, last for 5 minutes and have 20 slides that advance every 15 seconds. Considering my lecture overheads normally proceed at the rate of one every 5-8 minutes this is quite a challenge. I have about 10 of the slides done but amn't sure what else to cover. If all else fails I can always repeat! Oh, and the title of my talk is something like "How to (un)successfully run a Seanad election campaign on no money and even less planning" so it is somewhat politically focused.

Water Charges

Phil Hogan has put water charges firmly back on the agenda. As usual Nama Wine Lake were well ahead of the curve with their fairytale. But it is true that water charges, like most consumption and flat taxes, are regressive and in this case particularly expensive to gear up for. Another sop to the building industry?

JLCs

The other major bit of right-wing kite flying being done by the blue side of the coalition is the carry-on by Richard Bruton with the JLCs. Again the work has been done Michael Taft and others on the figures but attacking, yet again, those on extremely low levels of pay is daft. All it does is further reduce domestic demand which has a knock on effect of laying off even more people who's jobs are on the minimum wage or a rate agreed in a JLC. People at the bottom spend to survive - reducing their disposable income just continues the cycle of depression and cuts.


Think that's about it. See you all in a little while. I'll still be hanging out on Twitter if you need to find me.

A long old week

Its been a long old week both personally and politically.

Reports

Two major reports on Ireland were published in the last week. Firstly, Peter Nyberg published his report on the banking crisis where he blames pretty much everyone except specific politicians or the ECB. Buying into the school of thought that came out with classics such as "we all partied", it is hard to see what Nyberg really brings to the table in the way of clarity. Maybe in a few weeks, after the report has had time to sink in, I'll be more positively inclined towards it but at the moment it doesn't really do it for me.

Secondly, Colm McCarthy published his followup to his 2009 best selling An Bord Snip Nua report, by coming up with a list of national silverware that would be better off in private hands. While he had the decency to suggest that we should hang on until the market has recovered before flogging our assets, that there is about €5B to be generated by this process. Again, it is a detailed report, but An Bord Flog It does continue the right-wing agenda of privatisation. One would hope that at least some lessons of Greencore and Eircom will have been learned.

Music

Every year in the run up to Easter I find myself in St Patrick's Cathedral for long periods of time. However, it's not because I become a staunch Anglican. Rather, I am heavily involved in the staging of the annual Good Friday concert in aid of the Carmichael Centre for Voluntary Groups. Over the years I have been bumped up the food chain from stage hand to ticket checker to traffic control and now over the last few years to stage manager where I get to bully talented musicians and singers into doing what I want.

This year the Goethe Institut Choir performed Brahms' Requiem in a very successful evening. However, the first half of the concert was quite awkward from a logistics point of view as the choir performed a Tallis piece from the rear of the Cathedral as opposed to just staying on the staging at the front. However, thanks to the wonders of SMS technology it all went off without much trouble.

The Campaign

I suppose this being a political blog I should comment on the Seanad Campaign. I was on the Coleman at Large panel last Wednesday where we discussed the McCarthy report and the Seanad in some detail. Having done plenty of radio in the past I found it much easier than Vincent Browne the week before. I also bumped into David Norris at the Good Friday Concert where we had a good chat about the campaign and his plans for the Áras.

The count for the DU seats is happening on Wednesday in the Exam Hall, starting at 9:45. I'm still trying to decide what my metric for success will be. Obviously being elected would be the greatest success, but I'm realistic enough to accept that is an unlikely outcome. Initially, I think my goals are to not be the first candidate eliminated, secondly to get into triple figures and then maybe finally to end up further up the rankings than Paddy Power had me (joint 12th). Whatever way this election ends up I've enjoyed being part of the process and learned a lot. As they say if I knew then what I know now I'd have done it all differently.

Political tweetup

After Brian Cowen's "hoarse" performance perhaps it was proven that politics and alcohol shouldn't mix. However, tonight we're going to have another go by having a tweetup* with a political slant in the Market Bar from about 8pm. Kudos to Johnny Fallon and Jennifer Kavanagh for sorting it out. I'll report back over the weekend on how "congested" we all get.

* For those who are wondering, a tweetup is where people who know each other from (The) Twitter meet up in real life and have awkward interactions as people you previously flamed unmercifully now turn out to be normal humans.

Reform, What could we do tomorrow?

I'm stealing the title of this post from Johnny Fallon's blog, which everyone should read. In his post today, he put together a list of 17 items that could change in the morning that would improve politics in this country without requiring legislation. I'm going to comment on a few of them and hopefully add some more.

From Johnny's list

1. Return the Dáil to centre of debate and News.
   The relentless press conferences by government ministers announcing (or re-announcing for the 3rd time) various projects without questioning from opposition spokespersons is bad for politics. Bringing these events back to the Dáil is good for democracy. Sure, have a press conference afterwards, but make the initial announcement in the chamber.
2. Full review of Dáil Standing Orders
   This is one of my pet projects. Standing Orders currently make a mockery of parliament by restricting the number and type of questions that can be put to the executive. The rules about technical groupings for speaking rights is also a farce that silences legitimately elected TDs from participating fully.
3. Oireachtas Committees to meet in public
   I was at the meeting of the Oireachtas Committee on the Constitution that met in Trinity College earlier in the year. Even though it was a somewhat staged event with prepared presentations from students and pro-forma responses from the members it was a step in the right direction. The Committees are now where most of the review of legislation and policy happens and they should be more open to the public.
4. Monthly Town Hall style meetings for Ministers
   YAWN It would just turn into a stage managed event only watched by political anoraks. We just got rid of Questions and Answers from RTE, don't bring it back in an online version.
5. Tie voting into the PPS system
   Fully agree as I posted last October.
6. State of the nation address
   I still shudder when I see re-runs of the "living away beyond our means" speech that Charlie Haughey made. So I don't want to see this. We already have the budget which is a proxy state of the nation address anyway.

Some other changes I would throw out there include

1. Default to yes in FOI requests
   While FOI has been butchered by legislation there is still a lot of information that should be in the public domain but is hidden away behind layers of bureaucracy. FOI requests are often rejected for spurious reasons or the key information is redacted to protect the innocent. By default any information asked for should be given. In fact it should go one step further and all Govt departmental memos should be published unless containing commercially sensitive, security/defence information or the like.
2. Full accounting for political accounts
   This ties into Johnny's point on donations, but I would go further and say every politician's political account should be open to full scrutiny. This should also be extended to central parties, constituency organisations and even branches. Most people won't care, but scrutiny by opposing forces will keep each side honest.
3. Engage with young people
   That almost sounds patronizing, but if you consider the massive influence that the grey vote has compared to the under 25s contrasted to the massive impact that current policies are having on young people while leaving pensioners relatively unscathed, there is a massive disconnect between politics and young people. And by this I don't mean create a Facebook page and post some cool links on Twitter. Find out what they want and come up with better ways for them to contribute to society.
   

I'm sure there are loads more but that will do for starters. Any other ideas?

Whip it!

One of my best memories of watching Beavis and Butthead in the early 90's was when Devo's Whip It came on. The poor lads didn't know what to make of the song or the video and the term bumsnoidial buttsnoid was invented. Anyway the relevance of that useful snippet of nostalgia to this blog is the aftermath of the stag hunting bill last week.

The bill, which to my non-expert eye didn't really do that much, ended up being passed in the Dáil despite defections from various quarters. Mattie McGrath (FF) from South Tipperary voted against the bill in the electronic vote and then abstained from the walkthrough that was called. Tommy Broughan (Lab) from Dublin North-East refused to attend the session for either vote and Arthur Morgan (SF) from Louth managed to get himself suspended from the chamber so as not to have to vote against the bill. Then in the Seanad, Labour Senator Ivana Bacik also abstained from the vote on the bill.

After these events, both McGrath and Broughan lost the whip of their respective parties and Bacik found a strongly worded letter in her mail warning her of the consequences of any further non compliance with PLP wishes. Add to these the existing FF outcasts (Butler and Callely in the Seanad with Devins, Scanlon and McDaid in the Dáil) and potential future rebels (Máire Hoctor and Christy O'Sullivan downstairs and Senators Walsh, Hanafin and Ó Murchú upstairs) and all of a sudden there are quite a number of public reps operating outside the party system.

Having lost the whip, these members have to relocate their office to the independents penthouse floor and must resign any seats on committees that they held on behalf of the party. Most importantly, under the D´il Standing Orders they lose speaking rights in the Dáil as they are not a member of a party or technical group with 7 or more members. The goverment will not share time with its own rebels, but at the same time whipless FF TDs are unlikely to join forces with the "real" independents such as Jackie Healy Rae, Finian McGrath or Maureen O'Sullivan and give them a platform from which to attack their erstwhile colleagues in goverment.

The real problem stems from the strict enforcement of the whip system in the Dáil, due to our preference for a minimal sized coalition and lack of large majorities. In the UK there are three levels of whip along with free votes on certain issues. In the Dáil there is always a two line whip in operation with a three line enforced for votes of confidence, finance bills etc. This leads to the daft situation that occurred with the Stag Hunting bill where at least six FF back benchers spoke against the bill but only McGrath followed through on the threat of not supporting. For a bill of this nature that would not collapse the government, surely those who oppose it, whether for moral or political pressures, should be allowed to go with their conscience.

New Political Party

I guess it is symptomatic of the silly season, but over the last few weeks, blogs and twitter have been abuzz about the idea of a new political party being formed or a massive revamp of Fianna Fáil from within. Following various articles from left leaning commentators (VinB and FOT) about the possibility of a Labour led government, it comes as no surprise that a letter proposing a new liberal party was published in today's Irish Times.

what is needed is a truly liberal party which would provide a real alternative to the social democratic Labour Party and the centre-right conservatism of both Fianna Fail and Fine Gael, now indistinguishable from each other?

Sounds great in principle, a third way, free from historical baggage of the civil war, purely focusing on the liberal agenda and with a strong libertarian streak. In fact, in a way, it is the type of political party that this country has been crying out for. With almost 90 years of uninterrupted, centre-right, conservative rule, politics in Ireland could benefit from a conservative/liberal/socialist split with a smattering of smaller parties like you have in most modern democracies.

The problem is that any new party will struggle, as has most recently been shown by the PDs. Their relatively brief existence certainly shook up the political system for a while, but they never made the major breakthrough and eventually faded to irrelevance for several reasons: their agenda was absorbed by FF and FG, internal fighting between Cox, Harney and McDowell, punishment for acting as the FF mudguard.

A new party has two ways to form, either a disgruntled section of an existing party jump ship or else a grassroots movement eventually evolves into a fully formed party. The former is where the PDs came from, the latter the source of the Greens. There is no great groundswell of support from the general public to a new movement, therefore the only realistic route is through a splinter group from an existing party. Currently it is conceivable that some of the anti-Enda section of FG could bail and be joined by some of the disgruntled FF backbenchers. There are several problems with this scenario though

1. Neither FG nor FF or its members would be particularly aligned to the liberal movement. Sure FF sit with them in the European Parliament, but that is just to avoid having to sit with the nutjob right group they were in before.
   
2. The most likely FF to jump are the likes of Mattie McGrath and John McGuinness, neither of whom have a particularly strong national profile. From the FG benches you might get some of the heavers of last week but probably not Bruton, Varadkar or Kieran O'Donnell. Having no heavy hitter to lead the party would be a problem.
   
3. Were even a couple of FF deputies jump ship an election would quickly follow. Running a general election campaign takes between €10k and €30k per candidate. Were the party to contest every constituency they would need around €1 million. No fundraising that is within the SIPO rules could come close to that in the timescale required.
   
4. In an election any FF jumpers are still likely to be punished by the electorate for the financial meltdown of the last few years. A wolf in sheep's clothing is still a wolf.
   

It seems unlikely that we are on the verge of seeing a new political force appear. A long summer recess for FG to heal its wounds, for FF to pray for some economic recovery and for Labour to recharge the batteries for another year of increasing support levels across the country.

Electoral Reform

A while back I posted some thoughts on our voting system and suggested a few changes that I would make to it. After last night's Oireachtas Committee meeting in TCD it seems like a good time to return to it. At the event, students gave a brief oral summary of a written submission they had made to the committee. Some of the presentations focused on the mechanics of elections such as using the Gregory method for transfer of surpluses or order of candidate names on ballot papers. Others focused on participation through extending voting to ex-pats, addressing the gender imbalance in politics and reducing the voting age to 16. Each of the presentations was the responded to by a member of the Oireachtas committee.

There followed a debate chaired by John Bowman with Noel Dempsey, Ivana Bacik, Justice Frank Clarke and Prof Ken Benoit joining Sean Ardagh and Jim O'Keefe on the panel. There were also contributions from the floor by Joanna Tuffy, Gemma Hussey, Prof David Farrell and many members of the public. A lot of the discussion centred around women's participation in politics and whether there should be gender quotas built into the system. Other topics covered included the method for reform and whether any modifications to the system by elected TDs and Senators could accepted by the public as honest efforts at improvements rather than a cynical exercise in protecting themselves.

Seeing as this was a meeting of the Committee on the Constitution focusing on the electoral system for members to Dáil Éireann, a lot of the issues raised were actually outside the scope. Most items such as gender quotas, ballot paper order and the franchise can all be changed using legislation without recourse to changing the constitution. So what items would I like to see modified in Article 16?

• 16.1.1 - Why do you need to be 21 to be a member of the Dáil?
• 16.1.2 - Reduce the voting age to 16. I have rolled back from my more extreme point of 15 (12 for locals)
  
• 16.1.5/6 - Introduce a list system to avoid elections being popularity contests. This system should retain multi-seat constituencies and PR-STV for about 100 members and then elect about 60 from the list.
  
• Add a subsection to 16.1.1 introducing time limits for membership of the Dáil, maybe 3 sessions or 12 years, which ever is longer
  
• 16.1.7 - Add a time limit for seats being kept vacant. 3 months should be sufficient.
  

Of course, these changes should only be part of a wider change in the system of politics in the country. We need a stronger separation of legislative and executive. We need more powers and responsibilities devolved to local government. We need to take a long, hard look at the role and composition of the Seanad. We need to have better engagement between politics and the public on matters of policy. We need the system to encourage participation from all walks of life. Will any of this be delivered in the near future? I doubt it but we can all keep chipping away.

Constitution Week?

This evening the Exam Hall in TCD hosts a meeting of the Joint Oireachtas Committee on the Constitution followed by a Q&A session chaired by John Bowman. Seems like it is the place to be as almost all of the 330 available tickets have been snapped up. The official business will consist of formal submissions by various politics students to the Committee on the topic of electoral reform. It will be interesting to see if they start advocating assorted list systems or just tinkering with the existing multi-seat setup.

The Q&A session is where the real sparks will fly (hopefully!) as the general public will be allowed contribute to the debate. I'm expecting all sorts of weird and wacky proposals and comments from the usual lunatic fringe. The reform seminar that was held last June had an interesting set of contributors from academia, the media, politics and the hoi-poloi. If the quality of discussion is anywhere close to that, then we should be in for a treat.

Then on Thursday, Leviathan starts up again with a show on re-writing the Constituion. While this event may be slightly lower brow than tonight's, again it should be an entertaining and informative evening. I guess most of the attendees at this will also have been at the TCD event so hopefully the two events won't end up covering the same ground.

Fintan O'Toole for Mayor

Let me get this right out in the open - Fintan O'Toole is one of two men in the world that I might have a bit of a crush on. The other is rugby legend, Rocky Elsom but that is definitely a topic for a different blog! I agree with almost everything Fintan writes and whenever he is on Vincent Browne, Late Debate or Marian Finucane I find myself cheering him on as he fights the corner for social justice. As the liveblogs during these shows demonstrate, I am not alone in my Fintomania.

So about two weeks ago when Gormley announced his plans for elections to Mayor of Dublin in June, a brief flurry of tweets led to the creation of the Facebook group supporting Fintan for Mayor of Dublin. I posted a link to the Irish Times article announcing the race, Christine uploaded a few photos and we sent out a couple of invites to our nearest and dearest and left it at that.

Then yesterday evening, news came through that Fintan was going to be a participant in Late Debate discussing the Mayor of Dublin and his potential candidacy. I'm still waiting for the show's podcast to appear on the RTE website but apparently Fintan is interested in running if Bertie does just to scupper the disgraced, former Taoiseach's chances or if we can get 100,000 people to join the Facebook group. Now based on Bertie's statement last week it is unlikely that he will run for the position, so it is up to us, the grassroots supporters, to convince Fintan of the merits of his candidacy.

In reality, nobody expects Fintan to actually run, but it is fun to see a little bit of social networking hijinks ending up on the airwaves of the national broadcaster. So keep recruiting supporters. We're already at 28/1 on Paddy Power ahead of luminaries such as Bono, Shane Ross, George Hook and Dustin the Turkey. I'm putting a tenner on to help bankroll the victory party.


Update - 29 January
The podcast is now up on the RTE website.

Cllr Forde jumps ship

Like the Government with TDs, Sinn Féin aren't having the best of luck with their councillors on Dublin City Council. Seven councillors were returned for them at the June elections but after this weekend's announcement that Killian Forde from Donaghmede has left the party they are down to four. He has followed in the footsteps of Louise Minihan (Ballyfermot) and Christy Burke (North Inner City). This isn't overly surprising when you consider that Forde was the Councillor who proposed the 2010 budget at the Council meeting before Christmas taking a position contrary to the other SF councillors.

To my mind this is just the latest sign of a continual downward trend of support for SF south of the border. First they lost Mary Lou McDonald as MEP in the Dublin Constituency. Now SF will argue that with the constituency going from four to three seats that they were always going to be the ones to loose out but this not true. With Eoin Ryan losing his seat and Joe Higgins taking one, it shows that there was a leftish, protest vote in the city and SF were not the party to attract it.

The story was the same in the local elections where nationally SF returned exactly the same number of councillors in spite of the continued collapse of the Fianna Fail vote and the gains of other left leaning groups like Labour and PBP. After June's elections, Toireasa Ferris came out and slammed the party leadership as being too Northern focused and that the party was not suitably set up to contest elections south of the border. She demanded a review of operations and priorities in the south but that seems to have been ignored by the Adams/McGuinness power block in the North.

So where to from here for Sinn Féin? If they continue on their current path the are facing a complete meltdown in the Republic. They are being torn between the traditional, 32 county republicans (mainly rural) and the left wing, community activists (mainly urban) and a jump to either one will loose the other to FF or Lab/PBP. While it would go against everything they stand for, they should separate the party into a Northern and Southern section and let someone like Ferris take over down here. If we have another general election with Adams turning up for leaders' debates and McDonald failing again in Dublin Central, then SF are a spent force this side of the border.

Minority Government

As previously discussed the government has been leaking support like a sieve over the last few months. Just when I thought that they'd survive until after the budget before any further defections. But yesterday, Galway West's Noel Grealish, withdrew his support for the government. That reduces Cowen's support to 81 with 76 against and 7 floating votes so we're now in minority government territory.

So why has Grealish bailed now? Well firstly it is clear to see that there is no hope of three govt TDs being returned at the next election and with O'Cuiv and Fahey still in the Dail and O'Brolchain about the join them in the upper chamber Grealish has to make his move. It is also likely that he is going to demand a special Gregory-like deal for Galway before voting with the government again. With the recent flooding around the Claregalway area, it could be quite an expensive path for Cowen to have to take.

Sophistry in Language

Something that has really started to annoy me in politics is the relentless sophistry and weaseling out of a previously held position through alternative definitions. When will the spirit of the statement and not the word of the statement be what drives people. Examples include

Green Party entering government

Trevor Sargent says he will not lead the Greens into government with FF. So immediately after negotiating a programme for government he resigns to let John Gormley lead them in.

Unions agreeing to mandatory unpaid leave

Union leaders were mandated to stick to a no reduction in wages line in the recent talks. So instead they agree to mandatory unpaid leave which to all intents and purposes is exactly the same thing.

Various statements on no more taxes

A few months ago on The Last Word, Brian Lenihan had a bit of a George HW Bush moment when he promised that no additional taxes would be raised in the upcoming budget. Watch out for all sorts of increased levies, contributions and deductions that are totally different to taxes.

Enough is enough. When will these people ever have the courage to stick to a position or if they change come out and say that either they were wrong or have had their opinion modified through new information or debate. Do they really thing that they are fooling anyone?