Party Policies

I would suggest you go to their respective sites. Even if it is not completely impartial it will list their "current" policies. Take a look at the Useful Links sticky above for party websites.

PGL wrote: »

fair play to you Iwasfrozen!

as i said i am a novice, and as you have already kindly offered, could you explain terms such as right, left, centre, far, authoritarian, libertarian, socialist, populist etc etc

thanks in advance for your help!

Go to the Political Compass site and take the test. This will give your own position on the above graph, which will make it easier to see which parties align with your own beliefs.

Dero wrote: »

Go to the Political Compass site and take the test. This will give your own position on the above graph, which will make it easier to see which parties align with your own beliefs.

I was prefer EUProfiler.

PGL wrote:

as i said i am a novice, and as you have already kindly offered, could you explain terms such as right, left, centre, far, authoritarian, libertarian, socialist, populist etc etc

These are rough definitions that I'm trying to make as fair and unbiased as possible.

As a general rule "right-wing" means emphasising the rights of the individual, "left-wing" means putting what's best for society ahead of the individual. So a typically right-wing view is for low taxes, but left-wing would support higher taxes. Someone in the centre, like most people in Ireland, are somewhere in between.

Authoritarian means they want strict rules, like banning personal use of cannabis. Liberal means less strict rules, like allowing personal use of cannabis.

Populist sort of means they don't have any set policies, but they change with the mood of the country to be popular. It's a bit of a slur/insult to a party to call them populist; it sort of means they don't "stand" for anything.

Socialist is an extreme left-wing view, where as a general rule they want really high taxes so that everyone gets the same take-home pay regardless.

Generally people split political views into two areas: economics and political. So if you're economically right-wing, you want low taxes, etc. If you're economically left-wing, you want higher dole, etc. If you're politically left-wing, you probably want things like cannabis and abortion legalised.

The kind of confusing bit is where you could be economically right-wing (want low taxes) but also politically left-wing (want abortion legalised), or vice versa!

The diagram posted by Iwasfrozen has these two sections. So Labour are more libertarian than Fine Gael because they're more pro-choice than pro-life, etc. Labour are also more economically left-wing, because they want higher taxes. The Socialists and PDs (RIP :pac:) are roughly equal in terms of the rights of the individual, but miles apart in what tax rates they want.

The Economist wrote: »

I was prefer EUProfiler.

Yes, so do I, but I couldn't remember the URL at the time. As the graph looked to be from politicalcompass.org, I went with that.