United Ireland governing system

You haven't addressed the major negative of an executive head of state.

That their Cabinet is drawn from industry and academia, not elected by the people.

Irish people and a de facto technocracy would never be good fit. There is enough of a disconnect from politics as it is.

No, the Head of State shall be above politics and shall guard the enactment of the Constitution by the Parliamentary assembly and the agencies of the State. The Executive shall be elected by all the people. The Taoiseach shall nominate and chair that Executive, but be bound by its collective.

I'm still not seeing the problem with a ceremonial presidency. This is a common government structure, and is the norm in Europe. Of the 27 EU member states, 16 (including Ireland) are parliamentary republics with a largely ceremonial presidency, 6 are parliamentary monarchies with a ceremonial monarch, and 5 are semi-presidential republics where executive power is divided between a Prime Minister and Ministers who are accountable to Parliament and a President who is independent of Parliament. Not one is a fully presidential republic of the kind you propose. Presidential republics are mostly found in the Americas, in central Asia and in central Africa.

So, before telling us what you propose by way of a new system, you need to tell us why we need a new system. What's wrong with a parliamentary republic? What problem is your new system trying to fix? You've mentioned a couple of issues (possibility of an experienced president; lack of accountability of president) which your new system is clearly not trying to fix, and one issue (costs less than the British monarchy) that, frankly, doesn't look like a problem at all.

So, here's a challenge: without saying anything at all about you proposal for a new system, make an argument about why a parliamentary republic is not the right form of government for Ireland.

That flag is horrible and British - straight off the UK royal standard 🙄

Nope.

We keep the flag otherwise we gift it to IRA knuckledraggers like the 70s and 80s all over again.

There's a reason it has orange on it.

You brought him up as an example of why we should change to a presidential executive so its your job to back up that up with reasons somewhat based in facts when asked. Maybe try something beyond the simplified personal opinions youve been giving out up until now in the thread to back up your proposals.

Executive orders are only required in dysfunctional systems. Like the one proposed here.

I get your point but the downside of putting power in as many hands as you can, is that you end up with too many loci of power and therefore too many borders, too many people on little power trips rowing with their adjacent areas. This screws up things for the ordinary citizen. As pointed out above, if you live near or on a local authority/ county council border as it stands, you learn about these disadvantages. Too many borders for a small island, remove them and have five regional authorities. By all means have local committees within each but these in advisory capacity.

The trick though will be to give Ulster or Munster for that matter, a sense of being more in control of regional affairs. Rather than everything funneling through Dublin. Which is why some sort of federal system would fit the bill.

Well you know what the likely response to that otherwise reasonable idea would be down here. Apoplectic outrage from certain quarters and 'it's not for this that Pearse died in 1916... blah blah'.

The Senate in the USA is the upper house of parliament

The comparator to the Dail is the House of Representatives, which has 435 members.

There are also:

50x State Govts, with 50 Departments of Transport, Health, Education, etc.

50x State Senates

50x State House of Reps

50x State police forces

Thousands of local govts

Thousands of elected local Govt members

Thousands of Mayors

Thousands of local police forces

Personally I don't see any problem at all with Armagh as being the location of a national assembly or Orange marches on O'Connell Street, same as Paddy Day parades.

But we all know that for many citizens of this Republic, that would cause apoplexy.

The fact that Erdogan won is hardly an endorsement of a presidential over a parliamentary system. After all, if the other guy had won, he too would have been elected to an executive presidency.

The issue here is not who won the election; it's whether the Turkish example suggests to us that a presidential republic would be a good model for Ireland.

The answer, I think, is "no". Turkey is rated "not free" by Freedom House, whose criterion is whether a country is a democratic country with a government accountable to the people. In their view the government has "growing contempt for political rights and civil liberties" and it is engaged in "a dramatic and wide-ranging crackdown on perceived opponents". Relevantly Erdogan has "concentrated power in the hands of the president", which is concerning because "opposition victories in 2019 municipal elections and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the already shaky economy have given the government new incentives to suppress dissent and limit public discourse".

Don't believe Freedom House? The Carnegie Foundations takes the view that Turkey "has embarked on a militaristic foreign policy, and its democracy . . . has given way to one-man rule". The Economist considers that Erdogan has "dismantled many of the country’s democratic institutions" and that "Turkey is still just a democracy, but it is not certain to remain that way".

You may not agree with these perceptions, but they are not coming from the radical left. These are fairly traditional right-of-centre perspectives on Turkey.

Erdogan's only cheerleaders, really, seem to be authoritarians who like a government that delivers a firm slap, regardless of outcomes for freedom, well-being or human rights. If that's the kind of government that you want for Ireland, well, the Turkish experience suggests that a presidential republic may help to deliver it. But I think you're going to need to find a more compelling case than Turkey to persuade most people.

Turkey is (in effect) a dictatorship, and no it's not going well for anyone except Mr Erdogan. Do you fancy a 58% inflation rate?

Christ almighty.

The last thing a putative united Ireland needs is a more divisive, more polarised system.

What you call 'bureaucracy' I and others call democratic checks and balances.

I have no desire to be ruled by an SF Mussolini even if he did make the trains run on time....

That sort of thing works great in a country like Brazil or Burma where civil servants and their families can be relocated overnight at gunpoint.

This thread is mad.