Ireland badly needs a new centre-right party - Here's my proposal

It would be more sensible to reign in the criminal fees charged by criminal lawyers in Ireland. The whole cozy relationship between courts, solicitors and barristers (and politicians) which make even a simple case unavailable to the average citizen. Wholesale reform to lower costs and speed up the process. Its not like this on the continent.

So you want to break the western model of criminal justice entirely (1), seeing us censured by the EU, the ECJ, the ECHR and probably the UN, for unspecified savings? That does not seem like a good idea, or one that has had any thought put into it, bar "I don't like criminals" (but who does).

(1) The principle that an accused person is innocent until proven guilty and is entitled to a defence. By professional lawyers, not the accused standing there saying "I didn't do it."

this cant be true, we re clearly the only country having these issues! yup, we ve decided harassing people is definitely the best way of dealing with their issues!

Are they though? I mean obviously FG has lost a lot of votes since 2011 but is there any solid reason to believe many/most of them were disillusion fiscal conservatives? FG may well choose to believe most of those are still voting for them on the 'best of a bad lot' principle.

The only thing that will push FG in the direction you favour is the emergence of a serious challenger on the centre right, as per the OP.

The reality is that SF will dominate politics for at least the next decade, they are already setting the whole policy agenda which is been adopted and aped by the other parties. FG and FF are all but a spent force and it would take an almighty series of mistakes by SF to change that scenario. This may indeed create the perfect environment for a center right type party to emerge, but unless they have socially progressive policies to address the housing and health crisis they will not gain any serious traction in the country. Market led solutions to these problems, the bread and butter of the right, have failed to deliver solutions only making the crisis worse so I do not see much hope of a new center right party offering any serious new solutions.

A party similar to the Liberals (FDP) in Germany could be successful, a party based on the principals of individual freedom and human rights. The FDP are in favour of tax cuts and rejects any tax increases. They are also openly pro-immigration, being in favour of a points based system based on the Canadian model for non-EU immigration.

If a party such as this emerged in Ireland and made it clear from the outset that they are pro-immigrant and not socially conservative, they may be able to avoid attracting the far-right types and the accompanied attacks from some sections of the media.

Government is the private business, or at least a sizable proportion of the TD's are landlords and have property interests. They are looking out for themselves by favouring their own businesses - which is a failure of government. The crisis is caused by FF+FG and they show no willing to solve it so they will have to step aside to allow a party who is prepared to seriously intervene on behalf of the population to solve the problem - thats unlikely to be a new centre right party though and the reason why SF will dominate politics until they **** things up themselves.

What Ireland needs most is just a party that will look after those that pay for everything first.

In Dublin atm it seems if you are welfare dependent or rich you can live there.

If you are a middle rung worker who pays the taxes you can't.

So something is very wrong at the moment.

Leo said he would look after the majority of people, workers, in this country and that just hasn't happened.

I think those people have every right to be angry.

They see Anto and afternoon pyjama clad Jacinta getting €2,000 p/m apartments in Dundrum while they are told to basically **** off down the country.

Only a matter of time before this blows up

We shouldn't need to bring in unskilled labour, Nurses are skilled, some lad to throw meat in boxes isn't,