What do you want as the key election issues ?

Liam Byrne

When those individuals that you haven't seen in 7 years come knocking, what issues will you be raising with them ?

Here's my list:

1) Inflation - we might be more wealthy and better paid but we're paying through the nose for everything and we're uncompetitive as a result

2) The "property ladder".....I don't want to "invest", I want somewhere to live that I can afford, without paying a mortgage for an already-wealthy landlord :mad:

3) Public services - ESB, Gas, Health service, bin collecting, etc, etc all gone through the roof

4) Shannon Airport - if you support American troops in Shannon, you don't represent me

5) Rights of criminals vs rights of the public and of victims
If someone breaks the law, they have diluted their own rights; that's their choice, not mine, and they should have to live with the consequences. As someone brilliantly commented on The Last Word about that Clare woman's rape case - if you crash your car after drinking or taking drugs, do you get off scot-free ? Everyone should have equal rights until they deliberately encroach on someone elses; if they do that, THEY'RE the ones who have moved the goalposts, and there should be no legal help for them if someone returns the "favour"

6) Broadband - the current fiasco is pathetic, with neither ComReg nor the Goverment doing anything about it other than talking shop and lying down when eircom barks

7) Taxes for small fry, tax-free for the big boys
If you work for a small business or for yourself, you're working your ass off just to make ends meet; in the meantime, multi-millionaires play golf because of their grants and investments

8) Infrastructure
Every ring-road gets houses and retail parks built on it, defeating the purpose; every railway leads to Dublin, along with 90% of major roads. About time ye started actually planning things in advance so that life is more than commuting and working

9) Local Facilities
There is nothing to do except go to the pub; where are the sports facilities ? The local squash court closed down, there are feck all open, public green areas. Not everyone plays golf.

Delboy05

Immigration (asylum seekers, EU citizens, and work permit holders)
Whats each party's plan.
To FF/PD canidates;
1. how has practically every asylum seeker who arrived here been allowed stay (except those that moved on voluntarily) through 1 loophole or another. Why deportation orders not acted on.
2. why are people who's work permits have elapsed allowed stay here and pressure is now arising for an amnesty for them!!!!
3. How many people are we expected to let in to this country....when the Irish population are in a minority?
4. why are student visas still being handed out to chinese students when the dog on the street know that this is 1 huge scam.Most of them dont do to college, they work far more hours than they're visas allow and when their visas elapse, they just remain on here. Hence the chinese are now 1 of the biggest ethnic minorities here now.
5. Labour law enforcments. When will the number of labour inspectors be increased so as to catch illegal immigrants and improve the lot of legal workers being abused by employers.

To all other candidates:
what are your views on the above issues and what would your party do about it

Jackie laughlin

Do we want a socialist health system or a neo-liberal one?

RandolphEsq

I would like to see Ireland use her voice more in terms of world affairs e.g. North Korea, America in Iraq etc. Really, Im quite satisfied with how my life is at the moment in terms of economic stability (My parents ) and we are supposed to vote for what benefits us ourselves. So what I'd like to see is more worldwide plans like uniting the EU into one country over time

shoutman

The Health service is definately a key issue, throwing money at it is not the solution and everybody knows that. It's an absolute farce, too many people are coming out of hospitals worse off then they were when they went in (MRSA etc.)

I as a 20 year old who has never been overnight in hospital in my life would be openly fearfull to be staying in one (maybe its a phobia)

Also I think the tax situation has to be sorted out, "creative tax management" is a luxury only afforded by the wealthy who can afford to pay tax accountants money so they can pursue tax avoision. Its not right and has to be sorted out.

In a few years when I have a full time job I dont want to be stuck in traffic for 4 hours a day, I dont want poor infrastructure and badly planned roads to influence my career/housing choices in the future, this has to be sorted out. better funded bus routes, better public transport period. (I'm sure its been discussed an awful lot on the politics and other fora on boards but whats wrong with spending the money living through chaos for a few years and coming out the other end with a Paris/Moscow/New York/Calcutta style underground system, if these places could do it so long ago surely we can do it now, didnt some spanish operation offer to do it for a few billion?

Also I would like to see a ban placed on SUV's in citys, they are a complete nuisance, they are heavy polluters and a lot of the time the people driving them cant drive them! (I know the finance minister is going to put heavy taxes on them in time for the next budget, but whats the problem with doing that today?)

I'd like to see a clamp down on beggars, i'm not talking about people addicted to drugs or alcoholics living on the streets who have real problems and need the spare change to get by. I'm talking about professional beggars who work the streets as a job and then go back to their council houses an
d put their feet up (I know a family, residing in the darndale area who do this very thing and it sickens me when I see them in town begging as if they had no where to go.)

I've gotten completely off topic now

/end rant.

The_Minister

shoutman wrote:

I'd like to see a clamp down on beggars, i'm not talking about people addicted to drugs or alcoholics living on the streets who have real problems and need the spare change to get by. I'm talking about professional beggars who work the streets as a job and then go back to their council houses an
d put their feet up (I know a family, residing in the darndale area who do this very thing and it sickens me when I see them in town begging as if they had no where to go.

The Supreme Court recently struck down the law making begging illegal, so you can probable expect some new legislation to be drawn up soon.

ballooba

1. Public Spending (value for money)
2. Economy
2. Health
3. Transport

TheNog

Health and Education.

Health care should be available and readily for everyone whether they are private or public

Education - updating of school building and reducing the class sizes. Although education has come along way since I went to school,facilities do need upgrading so as to put the foot forward for the future

AngelofFire

Shannon Warport- All parties should clarify their stance on it

Healthcare-Would be great if we could have free G.P. care at the point of use.

Education Funding.

Gay Marriage

Workers Rights-In light of the Irish Ferries fiasco last year more has to be done to protect workers rights.

Public Transport.

InFront

Corruption, and dishonourable politics
Health Service: staff, facilities, MRSA
Crime & Punishment: Gangland, young criminals
Job losses (not saying I want more people to lose their jobs, I'd just like it to get a lot of focus)

And an overall promotion of the idea that some TDs seem to find hard to get their heads around: that a successful economy and a successful society are not mutually exclusive.

InFront

The_Minister wrote:

The Supreme Court recently struck down the law making begging illegal, so you can probable expect some new legislation to be drawn up soon.

Not sure about that, it was a very old, dated law as far as I understand, and I think a reintroduction of it would give the impression that the Government are picking on easy targets as opposed to the real criminals that abuse society in a much more devious way. They'll want to be seen as tough on tough criminals, not devoting their energy to minor, more benign offences that few people give much thought to.

rkeane

Health ....I think Mary Harney is doing a good job but more needs to be done
Immigration.....a proper debate is needed...failed Asylum seekers must be deported....all loopholes must be closed...this scam has cost this country hundreds of millions.
Broadband....we need to get real on broadband
Justice....something must be done about our bail laws

karen3212

Healthcare - a health card for everyone, as in the Uk, and free care for all(obviously paid for by taxes).
My sister is entitled to a medical card, but is ashamed to get one or use one. If we all had one, I think she would feel better about using it and actually go to the doctor when she is sick.

Macy

1) Decentralisation
2) Exploitation of immigrants, abuse sub contracting for de facto employee's, diminution of workers terms and condition, abuse of redundancy legislation etc etc etc. More weighting in favour of the ordinary worker instead of the fat cat I suppose.
3) Health Service, or lack of
4) Infrastructure, or lack of - transport, telecommunications, power
5) Planning and Environmental issues - mainly around the vast amount of (supposedly inert) landfill going on in Wicklow, and the lack of enforcement on the conditions, and lack of input by residents who have to live near these areas (or even by their representatives in the process).

dr.bollocko

Legalize it....

Jackie laughlin

" ...we are supposed to vote for what benefits us ourselves."

Very interesting. Expand.

nesf

Jackie laughlin wrote:

Do we want a socialist health system or a neo-liberal one?

Or more accurately, we want a socialist health system but are we willing to pay for it? Ditto with welfare etc.

Rather than the present rush to provide the biggest tax cut to the population while promising the sun, stars and moon.

karen3212 wrote:

Healthcare - a health card for everyone, as in the Uk, and free care for all(obviously paid for by taxes).

The problem is that majority of the people in this country don't bother with the part you have in brackets and seem to think that "efficient public spending" or something will cover it, which is patently false. If we want that kind of health system we have to pay for it but everyone is afraid to tell the electorate that they'd have to pick up the cheque.

RandolphEsq

dr.bollocko wrote:

Legalize it....

Legalize what?













Oh :cool:

mike65

Competence

Mike.

arbeitsscheuer

Healthcare, Housing, Education.

The basic obligations of the welfare state, to put it simply.

* Tackling the public service. Not only do the public sector have wages on average 30% above the equivelent private sector employee, they are guaranteed inflation proof wage increases that rewards ineffeicency. The job for life attitude is alive and well in the public service.
* Public transport. Through carbon tax or peak oil, the age of cheap transport will come to an end eventually. Make the bold moves now while we are flush with cash and invest in a good public transport system.

NewDubliner

The decentralisation scandal.

Stamp duty.

Government mis-management of the public service.

Failed projects being passed off as 'successful'.

is_that_so

Most of what I had thought of has already been listed although there's no harm repeating one or two of them.

Competence - Whoever we get , they should be competent and able. Quite a few outgoing that would never enter that category.

Education/Training - Instead of talking about "Life Long Learning", doing something about it. Would like to see a big push on upskilling and lots of incentives for people to actually take training courses. Also a big push on education - school building , class sizes and review of public exams.

Economy - let economic common sense prevail. Much bigger focus on how we can get indigenous companies to grow.
My bugbear: Scrap 12.5% corporation tax for any company that has no employees here.

Infrastructure

Value for money and finish some of these plans. More consideration given to public transport. Take on big semi-states(wishful thinking)

Public finances - Suspend benchmarking immediately subject to proper review.

Crime/Law - Sort out the legal system. This to me includes an awful lot of joined up thinking to be done, including the role of the judiciary, role of gardai,quality of our laws, use of prisons and what we want from our justice (not vengeance) system

Immigration - Policies , integration and everything to do with immigration all out on the table.

Planning/Development - Again some joined up thinking on regional and national level plus a need to tackle developers(personally I am a fan of "use it or lose it" approach to land banks), county councils "visions" and
[rant]also include massive fines for developers building estates without facilities.
Would also like to see some kind of central power that can intervene when half-witted councillors get their crayons out.[/rant]

Mental Health

Having recently been exposed to the tragedies that can unfold in this area it is one of the great undiscussed topics -IMO a very big taboo area. We need policies, laws and we need to talk about it.

billy the squid

AngelofFire wrote:

Shannon Warport- All parties should clarify their stance on it

Healthcare-Would be great if we could have free G.P. care at the point of use.

Education Funding.

Gay Marriage

Workers Rights-In light of the Irish Ferries fiasco last year more has to be done to protect workers rights.

Public Transport.

Funny, I must have missed the release announcing Shannon Airport's name change, oh well.

It doesn't really matter what the election issues are. It is not like the situation is going to be any better.

Health for example was a big issue at the last election, so much so that we had independents joining together to form the independent health alliance, what good did it do.

The only people who will get back in are the ones who get mary in Moyross a new set of aluminium windows off the council or who gets mikey's little johnny back into school after he's been expelled.

Het-Field

1.Reform of Archaic Gun Legislation which
-Allows For Guns In The home
-Allows Local Superintendants Hand Out Gun Licences

2.Criminal Justice
-Mandatory Life Sentences For Rape, Murder, Drug Dealing
-Mandatory 30 year sentences for all heavily involved in Gangland Crime
-Electronic Tagging
-New prison With More Places

3.Health
-Widening the Net of Irish Consultants

4.Immigration
-Deportation Of All Immigrants Guilty of Indictible Offences. This means that Immigrants wont face deportation for small traffic violations or petty offences like that

5.Finance
-The Continuation of the System which has seen Ireland ecome a major market force. I.E. The Liberal Economic Approach

6.Society
-The Introduction of Civil Unions
-An Abortion Referendum with a straight Choice Yeah or Nay

The Rejection of he Slump Coaltion in favour of a Government with the PDS

ballooba

Het-Field wrote:

2.Criminal Justice
-Mandatory Life Sentences For Rape, Murder, Drug Dealing
-Mandatory 30 year sentences for all heavily involved in Gangland Crime
-Electronic Tagging
-New prison With More Places

Who is going to pay for all these prison places?

Certainly not our dwindling number of IDA supported FDI companies.

Het-Field wrote:

The Rejection of he Slump Coaltion in favour of a Government with the PDS

Are you actually Michael McDowell? Mindless repetition of your leader's catchphrase does not make for good debate.

Cantab.

I want my government to:

Fix the housing market.

Realise a sustainable economic future.

Tackle local authority corruption and poor planning.

Fix the chronic traffic congestion.

Sort out the social time-bomb in west Dublin and other commuterland areas.

Protect the rights of the unborn.

Continue the good work in Northern Ireland.

Ensure the freedom of all religious institutions and their ethos.

Jonny Arson

is_that_so wrote:

Mental Health

Having recently been exposed to the tragedies that can unfold in this area it is one of the great undiscussed topics -IMO a very big taboo area. We need policies, laws and we need to talk about it.

Wholeheartedly agreed. Someone close to me has been suffering from mental health problems and I am sickened and appalled at the lack of care and treatment this person has recieved. Simply, the mental health service is under resourced and they do not want to know about people who have severe mental health problems or who are suicidal. After much making of noise finally this person was taken into a hospital but the doctors and staff played psychological warfare on this person in every attempt to make them think there was nothing wrong with them and they're imagining everything etc. etc. They didn't want to know and they make you worse. A girl who was in the bed next to my close friend had thrown herself out of a 2nd floor window in a suicide attempt and they kicked this girl after 2 days because she was ''fine''. All this is only a fraction of the story.

The neglect of mental health care in this country is an absolute national disgrace and cannot continue to be kept hush hush by our inhumane politicians as there are people unessecarily dying because of our government's couldn't give a fcuk attitude. If there was any secret undercover investigation just like Leas Cross you will miraculously see it become an issue and action been taken on it. They know its an issue but until it become mainstream then they'll make the effort to save lives.

nesf

Jonny Arson wrote:

Wholeheartedly agreed. Someone close to me has been suffering from mental health problems and I am sickened and appalled at the lack of care and treatment this person has recieved. Simply, the mental health service is under resourced and they do not want to know about people who have severe mental health problems or who are suicidal. After much making of noise finally this person was taken into a hospital but the doctors and staff played psychological warfare on this person in every attempt to make them think there was nothing wrong with them and they're imagining everything etc. etc. They didn't want to know and they make you worse. A girl who was in the bed next to my close friend had thrown herself out of a 2nd floor window in a suicide attempt and they kicked this girl after 2 days because she was ''fine''. All this is only a fraction of the story.

The neglect of mental health care in this country is an absolute national disgrace and cannot continue to be kept hush hush by our inhumane politicians as there are people unessecarily dying because of our government's couldn't give a fcuk attitude. If there was any secret undercover investigation just like Leas Cross you will miraculously see it become an issue and action been taken on it. They know its an issue but until it become mainstream then they'll make the effort to save lives.

It's a taboo in the society and this is what filters through to all levels, honestly this will never be a top priority for any of the parties election manifestos until society changes, and that's just the way politics is. Also, you (most likely) have no psychiatric training, so don't try and judge whether or not someone should be taking up a bed in a psychiatric ward. It's a very complicated thing and sometimes the worst place for a person is in there.

redspider

I think the disaster that is our Health System needs to be tackled. I was heartened to see the issues lively debatedly on a double header special on Prime Time recently, perhaps some of you caught it?

The retired consultant, Sheehan, a founder of Blackrock Clinic spoke well and made a very valid point that there should be one good public system in the country, and if there was to be anything private it was for the top-end. He is against the current mixed system. Unfortunately, he has the experience but many out there do not, especially some of his fellow Consultants.

Of course like many issues, it is sometimes stating the obvious, and yet there is no long term solution to changing the current situation, as Political Parties are weak, as solutions require dealing with Unions and Public Servants who have their own self-interest and their own remuneration as first priority and the system improvement second.

Political parties do not take hard decisions readily if at all. As was pointed out in the programme, people are dying. There is much talk about the deaths on our roads, many self-inflicted and avoidable. But these deaths are not self-inflicted and are not avoidable in the current system. Ironically, dead voters dont vote!

Mental Health, as alluded to above may be another sub-problem within the Health system. I am no expert in that area so cant comment on its level of resourcing, the effects, etc. Anecdotally it does seem to use up a lot of funding but that may be a mis-perception. But like many areas in the Health Service, putting extra money at it is not the only part of the solution. The whole system needs a major overhaul and so far I have not heard any concrete and detailed plans from any party as to what they will do to make things better.

FF + PD's, surely they have had their stint at this and failed. Another 'shower' may be no better but is it time they were given a try??

hmmmm .....

Redspider

ps: will you be compiling a top-10 of issues .... you can put up 20 in a poll perhaps and then we can vote on them .....

po0k

Energy self-sufficiency (or as close as we can get).