Cork Mayoral Plebiscite

snotboogie

munstermagic11 wrote: »

No it hasn't. An undefined role hasn't been passed. Ramming through something without proper diligence undermined the entire process, and aided the No vote.

The hilarious jokes are there because people are totally over reacting to this. And of course it could be re-ran in Cork again at some point. Leo might easily be on the opposition benches when it is rerun, not too far in the future.

You’re still giving out about the process and diligence, that won’t mitigate against a scenario where Cork lacks the representation that all other cities except Waterford have. These roles have the potential to grow into really powerful positions that could give much needed autonomy to our cities. The lack of definition around the role is now incredibly dangerous for us. Based on what has come out since the result this has a minuscule chance of being run again. We will have to wait and see what happens over the next few months and years but the fact that bishopstown isn’t smoldering ash and Limerick hasn’t yet turned into Singapore is of scant consolation this morning.

j8wk2feszrnpao

snotboogie wrote: »

You’re still giving out about the process and diligence, that won’t mitigate against a scenario where Cork lacks the representation that all other cities except Waterford have. These roles have the potential to grow into really powerful positions that could give much needed autonomy to our cities. The lack of definition around the role is now incredibly dangerous for us. Based on what has come out since the result this has a minuscule chance of being run again. We will have to wait and see what happens over the next few months and years but the fact that bishopstown isn’t smoldering ash and Limerick hasn’t yet turned into Singapore is of scant consolation this morning.

Hyperbole alert.

daithi7

munstermagic11 wrote: »

Hyperbole alert.

Ain't it just!!!

flo8s967qjh0nd

Given the closeness of the results, I can see all 3 DEMs being included in a citizens assembly. Bad news for Limerick that has already indicated it wants to drive on. The assembly will ultimately indicate that this is a good idea for the cities and it will happen. Just a delay now which is unfortunate and totally avoidable. The campaign itself was inept.

Roger Hassenforder

At the risk of triggering someone, for info all, they've ran out of lobster bisque in Highfield Avenue soup kitchen...

mire

Roger Hassenforder wrote: »

At the risk of triggering someone, for info all, they've ran out of lobster bisque in Highfield Avenue soup kitchen...

Now that's a crisis

Anteayer

There's definitely a lot of overreaction. If the history of Seanad reform is anything to go by, it might even never happen.

We need a much more holistic reform of local government than this. I'm getting a bit fed up with some of the gung-ho attempts to shortcut and hot-wire democracy. I mean, this proposal has merit and deserved proper deliberation and it didn't get any of that.

So, Limerick's ended up voting for a magic mystery box and will (or would if it ever happens) be implementing it in, what I would consider, an inappropriately merged mess of a council.

MrDerp

A plebiscite is not a referendum. The whole point is it’s not binding, a request for an opinion.

The govt can install 5 mayors in Cork and split Limerick in two if the Dáil backs it. Remember the boundary extension? ‘Sort it out or we’ll sort it for ye.’

‘We won’t be asked again. Varadkar tweeted as much’. Sheesh

User142

The fact that the central government barely tried. The fact that none of the major parties really tried. It just shows how much a missed opportunity this was for us to start something. Swinging 500 votes to win wouldnt have taken much of an effort.

Can't blame the public. The campaign just wasnt up to scratch at all.

namloc1980

This makes for depressing reading: Negotiations underway to find new Lord Mayor

FFG looking to overturn D'Hondt in city hall and sew up the LM between them and all the other goodies (chairperson roles) with a couple of independents "willing to do business". In effect cutting out the rest from any chance of doing anything positive. This bit in particular:

The other issue with D’Hondt is that the small parties will all want their turn in the lord mayor’s chair.

Though it’s not a redline issue, Fine Gael and especially Fianna Fáil want two years each with the mayor’s chain, and would have trouble signing up to a proportional system that would give them one each, and divide the other three between Sinn Féin, the Greens, and the Independents. With Fianna Fáil’s Kenneth O’Flynn, Fergal Dennehy,, and John Sheehan and Fine Gael’s Joe Kavanagh and Deirdre Forde all said to be in the mix, those two parties will want as many years in the chair as they can get.

Back to the same old rubbish in city hall. :rolleyes:

Anteayer

There's some concern emerging that a lot of households did not get any communication about the mayoral plebiscite.
Straw poll: Did you receive a mayoral plebiscite information brochure?

In my case:
NO

Brussels Sprout

No. I received leaflets from Euro no-hopers Breda Gardner and Dolores Cahill (they got 2.8% of 1st preferences combined) but nothing at all about the plebiscite.

hans aus dtschl

Nothing whatsoever about the mayor came to us.

Furthermore, I've heard of voters in the "new" part of the city being left in the county by mistake (same/similar townland name across both). They couldn't vote. That's 4 missing pro-mayor votes straight off.

Anteayer

It would be interesting to get a decent survey done somewhere to see how many people actually got no info whatsoever sent out.
It's increasingly looking like the whole thing was a complete mess in both Cork and Waterford.

Brussels Sprout

The only someone who votes but doesn't have much interest in politics would have known about it would have been if they spotted some of the (very few) posters put up about it by FG and the Greens. Even then they could very easily have assumed they were to do with the Divorce referendum.

Mr Bloat

Anteayer wrote: »

There's some concern emerging that a lot of households did not get any communication about the mayoral plebiscite.
Straw poll: Did you receive a mayoral plebiscite information brochure?

In my case:
NO

I'm in Ballincollig and not only did I not get any information at all about the plebiscite, I wasn't even sure if we were going to be able to vote on it until I walked into the polling station. Over a couple of weeks before the vote, I asked a number of people in Ballincollig if they knew whether we would get a vote on it or not and they all assumed we wouldn't because they assumed we would have gotten some information on it if we were eligible to vote on it, so I suspect they also didn't go out of their way to inform themselves about it.
I also asked all of the politicians that called to my door about their views on it and they all but one said they were against it.

Anteayer

Whole thing was an unadulterated mess.

I'm starting to lose confidence in the whole operation of the electoral system here due to a lack of a formal Electoral Commission and the plebiscite fiasco perfectly illustrates why it's a mess!

There were vast numbers of spoiled votes for a variety of reasons from lack of voter education, confusing ballot paper design, overly strict rules due to the Keily Judgement which is resulting in much less discretion about interpreting unclear papers etc. There were over 73,000 invalid votes or over 4% of the ballot and most of those do not appear to have been a protest. They were largely technical errors e.g. misnumbered preferences or in some cases voters even treated the local election paper as a continuation of the EP paper and numbered maybe 1, 2 3 on one paper and then another paper shows up with 4, 5, 6...

The recount also looks likely to be down to poor sizing of the constituencies. The Ireland South EP constituency was really pushing the PR STV system with manual counting to the limits of what's possible. There were 7 tons of papers!

Then you've a voters register that's a complete mess with different databases in every local authority and all sorts of risks.

We absolutely need an electoral commission or the system will throw up more and more of these kinds of messes and you'll have extreme conspiracy theory candidates claiming all sorts.

namloc1980

The FFG Lord Mayor pact is back in city hall.....great.

marno21

From Fine Gael's manifesto

The people of Limerick voted to have a directly elected mayor with executive powers. We will ensure that legislation to give effect to this decision is passed, so that the first directly elected mayor can be elected no later than May 2021. In support of this initiative, we will provide exchequer resources of €5 million per year from 2022 to Limerick City and County Council, to deliver on the mayor’s mandate

Doesn't look so bad now. Would have only taken 700 years to implement CMATS with that funding profile.

namloc1980

Back to this. The Limerick Mayor election is expected to take place by the end of the year.

The new mayor of Limerick will hold office until 2029, finishing this local election term and the next. The position will have powers over housing, building, road transport and safety, strategic development and environmental services.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.rte.ie/amp/1192128/

shnaek

namloc1980 wrote: »

Back to this. The Limerick Mayor election is expected to take place by the end of the year.

The new mayor of Limerick will hold office until 2029, finishing this local election term and the next. The position will have powers over housing, building, road transport and safety, strategic development and environmental services.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.rte.ie/amp/1192128/

It'll be very interesting to see how it works out.

This is going to be interesting!

rebs23

An opportunity missed but hopefully if it goes well in Limerick (they don't elect some idiot) then we really need to get this revisited for Cork and elsewhere.

feargale

rebs23 wrote: »

An opportunity missed but hopefully if it goes well in Limerick (they don't elect some idiot) then we really need to get this revisited for Cork and elsewhere.

How would Bernie Murphy fare in a people's election?

igCorcaigh

rebs23 wrote: »

An opportunity missed but hopefully if it goes well in Limerick (they don't elect some idiot) then we really need to get this revisited for Cork and elsewhere.

I could get even more interesting if they do elect an idiot.

the beer revolu

feargale wrote: »

How would Bernie Murphy fare in a people's election?

I think you need to be alive to run for election.

rebs23

igCorcaigh wrote: »

I could get even more interesting if they do elect an idiot.

John Moran would be entertaining with all his potshots at Cork!:)

AugustusMinimus

I get the impression that some people believed they were voting to abolish the position of Lord Mayor.

Online comments couldn’t understand when the City Council elected a new Lord Mayor after the plebiscite.

snotboogie

https://www.rte.ie/news/analysis-and-comment/2021/0214/1197093-opportunities-brexit-nationalism/ this article really shows the benefit of directly elected city mayor's in the UK. Still can't belive this was voted down in Cork.

Brussels Sprout

Give it a year of Limerick having a mayor making headlines talking up Limerick and I guarantee that a subsequent plebiscite will pass easily.