FF/FG/Green Government - Part 3 - Threadbanned User List in OP

I remember Fianna Fail coming out with an absolute extravaganza budget in the early 2000s. Money for everyone. They were loaded on fake boom money. Maybe it was the one where the government gave every family a one off 1000 euro for every family with children or was it every child? Anyway, everyone was going to be happy - social welfare recipients, public sector workers, private sector etc etc. It was a free for all. I wondered how the opposition would respond...

Richard Bruton came on the radio that afternoon and said the government hadn't gone far enough. I could not believe my ears.

Idiots.

Not another red cent was another one.

The delusion in FG is they think this is forgotten...a bigger version of the Labour party, navel gazing about why they are about to dip into the teens in support. They are in serious danger now of going the same way as Labour = irrelevant.

Longer they go on, longer Sinn Féin get closer to a single party government or something very close to that

IIRC the only thing in their "5 point plan" that they actually attempted, was the Seanad, which insanely was kept by vote. They obviously had to attempt that one, as it would have been noticed if they tried to ignore it like the rest, even though they did delay it at least once, presumably waiting for the wind to change.

Re Cronyism - Enda was the most blatant abuser of cronyism I can ever remember seeing.

Politics isn't the Premier League chief. Talk about being blinkered to the power swap!

Here are some numbers for you.

FG TDs

2011 = 76

2016 = 50

2020 = 35

The recent polls don't show buyers remorse around the loss of 41 TDs

Get the lemons ready...

Yes and after the referendum Enda promised reform because it was clear nearly 50% wanted it abolished and even the ones that voted to keep it really wanted the Seanad as a governance/oversight entity for the Dail i.e. they did not trust our TDs who had ruined the country.

In December 2014, Enda set up an independent working group on Seanad reform chaired by former senator Dr Maurice Manning. This group published a comprehensive report in 2015, which the current government committed to implement. Yeah right. This report was the 14th such report in 40 years on this issue.

FFG have promised reform for decades. 14 reports later with great recommendations, we are no closer to reform.

The Seanad now represents the culture of Cronyism for FF and FG.

Senator Lynn Boylan another good example. How many elections has she lost now?

Sadly the current programme for government only mentions the Seanad four times, two of which were in the same sentence. None of these to do with Seanad reform.

Sure why would they want to reform it. The 11 Taoiseach nominations were;

• Mary Fitzpatrick, a Fianna Fáil councillor the Cabra-Glasnevin constituency. She has run in four general elections and one European election, but failed to win a seat.
• Lorraine Clifford Lee, a Fianna Fáil senator in the last Seanad. She lost out to Green Party candidate Joe O’Brien for a seat in the 2019 by-election in Dublin Fingal last November. At the start of the campaign she had been forced to apologise for a number of tweets from 2011 about Travellers. 
• Erin McGreehan, a Fianna Fáil councillor in Louth, she was a first-time candidate when she won her seat on the council last year. 
• Timmy Dooley, a Fianna Fáil TD for Clare from 2007 to 2020, he lost his seat in the general election in February and was an unsuccessful candidate in the 2020 Seanad election. Before that, he had been a long-standing front-bench spokesperson, but was one of the TDs involved in the Votegate controversy. 
• Regina Doherty, Fine Gael who was Minister for Social Protection in the last government will be the Leader of the Seanad. 
• Aisling Dolan, first elected as an Independent councillor on Galway County Council in May 2019. She ran in the 2020 General Election for Fine Gael in Roscommon-Galway and is thought to be a good bet for a Dáil seat when Ireland next goes to the polls.
• Emer Currie, a Fine Gael councillor who ran unsuccessfully in the February general election. She is also a former director for the country’s largest advertising and marketing agency. 
• Mary Seery Kearney is a councillor on South Dublin County Council for Fine Gael and a practising barrister. In March, she was a last-minute candidate for the Seanad Labour panel because there was an insufficient number of contestants.
• Vincent P Martin, a Green Party councillor in Kildare and also Catherine Martin’s brother. He missed out on a seat in the Dáil in February’s election. 
• Róisín Garvey, a Green Party councillor in Clare. Her father Flan was a Fianna Fáil representative on the local authority from 1985 to 2009.
• Eileen Flynn, a Traveller activist for more than a decade, she has campaigned on anti-racism issues, marriage equality, housing and abortion rights. She will be the first female Traveller in the Oireachtas. 

It really captures the essence of the Seanad for FFG. Checks and Balances - yeah right.

2 County council elections in Kerry,was an MEP for 5 years, Seanad since 2020, lost by- election in 2021.

You might tell Lynn she got elected in Kerry coz an interview she did in the run up to the 2014 European Elections she spoke about her lack of success down there.

You asked how many she lost, 2 council in Kerry and by-election in Dublin