General Irish politics discussion thread

Would everyone all of a sudden be happy that the populist right is in government, where they make policy and legislation to row back on this like clean air and water, public transport, abortion, divorce, drunk driving

To be honest, I'd be happy if Independent Ireland were in government with FF, FG or both, and then they proposed these things for a vote. The new policies would fairly obviously not pass, and the optics of attempting to row back such popular legislation would likely tank their vote amongst the swing voters. They'd be a 1 shot coalition party.

This is one of the stronger points about our voting system - a minor party has minor power and can't do these kinds of things with the support of the majority party, who has the majority of the power by virtue of obtaining the majority of the popular vote.

II don't offer answers to anything. I call them the Ballygobackwards Party. A crystalisses of what they are, a new Soc Dem Cllr is seeking to remove prayers from the start of each Cork County Council meeting, II come out opposing it before there's any discussion. A variant on Ulster says NO.

I'm not vehemently against prayers, but I would have a rational discussion on it. Do we really follow through on the separation of religion and state?

@Water John we talk a good game about being a secular republic but in reality there is no separation of church and state in Ireland, almost 95% of our primary schools are religious controlled despite being fully state funded, and they indoctrinate kids with the state’s blessing.

Michael “Opus Dei” Woods decided the taxpayer would pick up the vast majority of the RCC’s abuse compensation and that was that. €1bn+ and counting.

I’m thinking of setting up a religion with prayers of minimum length one hour, then forcing the councils to recognise it because it’s sectarianism if they don’t 😎

Of course you'd disagree. Despite being in government, despite FG controlling Dublin city Council, despite a FG Minister very vocal pleas to stop the Dublin City transpor plan tpostponed, it is still somehow SFs fault. 😂😂😂

Can we have examples please, of how SF are "the biggest obstacle to public transport"?

Harris is looking to promote a fresh new brand image for FG. It works both ways, if he gets back into government, he can claim new ideas and new blood, if he ends up in opposition, he won't be stuck with old TDs who have no chance in 5/6 years time of getting elected.

Steenson is a complete chancer whose being doing the rounds for years.

To be fair STV isn't perfect either, we get many candidates getting seats without reaching the quota. Take for example in 2016 where 49.8% of the vote gave FF and FG 94 seats (or 59% of the 158 available)

I don't think there is a "perfect" system though to be fair, just degrees of perfection. Of which STV has a much higher degree of it than FPTP. With that being said FPTP makes for stronger governments so you have to weigh positives with negatives the whole time

It would suggest that people gave a first preference to one party (or indo) and a second preference to another suggesting party loyalty is not very high so that would be the main bug.

The system itself is a good one aside from the numbers that can get in without a quota, min 1 per constituency you could essentially have a political party on the fringe in theory gain 43 seats without a quota

Get rid of 3 seat constituencies and most of this "problem" goes away. But as Podge says, first prefs are certainly not the be all and end all in PR-STV. Your tenth pref might be the one that pushes someone over the line.

It's also very possible to protest vote (or even pity vote) with your no.1 and then move on to candidates who are actually electable.

Yes, the larger the average constituency is, the more proportional the result.

But we're wedded to the old county lines, which makes it difficult.