General Irish politics discussion thread

Quite all over the place, splashes of de Valera's Ireland, libertarianism, pragmatism and culture wars.

One of them got elected in my hometown but I can't place him and social media doesn't tell me much about him, just the one person in common and that person has little interest in such politics, more likely because noth are quite athletic.

If that is the case (no whip, opposite opinions on policies) then what is the point of it being a party?

I missed this statement at the time but I see it is coming back to haunt him now. Did comments like that lose Grace O'Sullivan her seat in Europe?

Where now for the leader and the party?

Why would a party leader being confident/optimistic about seat counts at the local level hurt one of their European candidates?

Well, SF not taking heeds of poll trends and running to many candidates, would be my main take from the elections.

"Wow, look at this political party with ambition, definitely won't be voting for them so." Can't really see the logic in that attitude personally but horses for courses and all that.

Because something, anything to deflect from Sinn Fein.

Those who don't support the Greens really don't understand that they use every single day in government to make changes. They work on making sure those changes are irreversible so that it doesn't matter if they are not in government after the election. Achieving change is the priority of the Greens, as opposed to a party like Sinn Fein where achieving power is the goal with no idea what to do with it.

All of which you are spamming with nonsense to shut down the conversation

It looks like we'll have to wait now until the Planning and Development Bill comes into pass as it's been delayed until after the summer recess, all 700+ pages of it! Darrgh won't be getting this one done right now it seems!

https://www.rte.ie/news/politics/2024/0613/1454623-planning-bill/

https://www.thejournal.ie/planning-and-development-bill-delayed-autumn-6408745-Jun2024/

No, not at all. Rational and sophisticated transferring has long been a feature of Irish elections. There are a couple of reasons why FF and FG voters might transfer to one another that do not involve voters assuming they are the one party:

• Both parties have a similar ideological position on the centre-right. If you're a centre-right voter (and Ireland has always had a lot of those) then transferring from FF to FG or vice versa is a pretty obvious thing to do.
• Both parties currently are in government together. If, broadly speaking, you're more supportive of the government than not, then it makes sense to transfer from one government party to another.
• A significant cohort of older FF and FG voters either mistrust or detest SF, for historical reasons that we hardly need to rehearse. By the time the last FF or FG candidate has been eliminated/elected in any count, most of the minors/independents will also have been eliminated, and if these voters won't preference SF then their next effective preference is very likely to be the other centre-right party.

Just ask yourself the analogous question in relation to NI elections. If SF voters have a high transfer rate to SDLP and vice versa, or if DUP voters have a high transfer rate to UUP, do you imagine that this means they think that SF and SDLP/DUP and UUP are the one party? Or can you think of other reasons for transfer patters like these?

I agree with this.

It is a recent development that FF voters transfer to FG and vice versa.

A longer analysis of transfer patterns would be interesting. For example, Kathleen Funchion got something like 65% transfer from her SF colleague to get elected. This was an excellent transfer for the current election, but historically, there were transfer rates of over 80% between candidates and also better vote management. FF left a seat behind them because of running three candidates and unbalanced share of the vote, while FG did really well to get both Carberry and Walsh elected.

Possibly the worst example of vote management in this election was in Cabra, MLMD's home ground, where SF ran 4 candidates, had around 1.4 quotas in first preferences, but only managed to take one seat as the internal transfers were poor, too many candidates and they were transfer toxic, not picking up transfers from anywhere.

Lessons to be learned for all parties.

Longer term, one of the biggest beneficiaries of the election will be the smaller parties like Labour, SDs, PBP etc. Sinn Fein will be afraid to run too many candidates in the general election. Take Dublin West, for example, which I know well from living here. Paul Donnelly is the SF TD, he has installed his wife as councillor to protect his bailiwick. I doubt he will have a running mate as based on the local numbers, there isn't much more than a quota. That opens the door to Ruth Coppinger, a second FG candidate, or O'Gorman holding his seat.

Can see it happening. The by-elections will be the reason.

You can see it with councilors who split from ff and fg, their votes follow them and don't stay with the party.

https://www.rte.ie/news/courts/2024/0621/1455983-sipo-gp-contract/

Noticeable that the court found that the decision was inadequately reasoned rather than wrong.

"It added that "it may be that there was a concern about the entitlement of the Commission to gather evidence that may be found in the confidential discussions of the cabinet.

However the court found that "this was not stated by the Commission. Ultimately it is not for this court to fill in the blanks"."

Effectively the court appears to have found that the right decision was made for the wrong reasons. Hence, it rejected Murphy's other requests.

In my opinion,the court there has aaked SIPO to state why it saw fit not to investigate

That should be simple enough for them to do as the reasoning should be there as it is,just unpublished

The court is not taking a view,nor should it on Mr Murphys conspiracy theory re SIPO being biased or something if thats what he's suggesting

Do ya know he'll have another pointless greasy pole uphill battle on that score anyway given the DPP ruling on the case,more in his line to be looking after his constituents

Sort of; SIPO may well decide not to investigate again, this time providing adequate reasoning, but the courts have not just asked them why they saw fit not to investigate and instructed them to publish the justification, they've overturned their previous decision not to investigate altogether.

If the reasoning was there, but unpublished surely 1) that would've been brought up during the court case 2) they should've fecking published it?

SIPO have clearly fallen short of expectations, deflecting over to criticisms of Paul Murphy won't handwave that away.

That being said (and I think I was pretty clear in my initial comment) the courts absolutely haven't found anything amounting to gross impropriety from SIPO. It could well be a procedural issue and we'll be back to where we started in a few short weeks except this time with adequate reasoning.

Not scandal of the century by any means, but absolutely a, 'must do better' admonishing for SIPO.

Did you have your own trial and find him guilty?

Think whatever you like but the court has found SIPO have a case to answer.

No, the Paul Murphy involved here did not hold anyone captive nor organised a ‘mob attack’.

.

Another who cannot bear the government or it’s institutions being scrutinised never mind held to account.

Play the insinuation game with somebody else maybe. Not interested tbh

Thats not a clear way of describing what the decidion was

If it was Mickey Mouse ,T.D for North louth southwest who stepped in as Taoiseach for a week while varadkar was having a lobotomy,who was not being investigated,the court,or this judge woukd also ask Sipo to provide its reasoning

The court has made a new precedent,that all SIPO decisions of whatever ilk now must come with published reasons

Its created a super FoI ,if you like

Consequence is simply to state its reasons which shouldn't be difficult and in my view should always be done

Their job on tgat score has been made easier by the DPP's decision in the matter which makes me question why Paul Murphy thinks he's won something?

He has done us some service alright with the legal precedent I mentioned alright but I don't think thats what he was looking for ?

But SIPO has always been required to give a reason for not investigating something. Hence the reason for the judicial review. Again, it's not a new procedural precent, it's something they've always been required to do under the legislation, but for some reason they didn't bother to do it.