How would you reform Irish Politics?

Deleted User wrote: »

I would:
I`ll start:

Direct Democracy would have to play a bigger part in society. Power to the people.

Directly Elect the Taoiseach & Minister for Finance.
Directly Elect all Ministries - these then work under whatever budget the Minister for Finance allows them.

Justice: Reform the Gardai starting with making it more independent from the political system by banning the current practice of the cabinet appointing all Garda promotions of Superintendent and above.
Ban the labour court from wage setting.
Introduce mandatory sentences for repeat offences. I would be more lenient than the US 3 strikes and your out system.

Property Market:
Release NAMA properties. Firesales & reformed bankruptcy - 3 yrs and your out.
Neuter An Bord Pleana, An Taisce and slimdown local authority planning agencies by removing the zoning system completely.
Allow the building of houses under 2,000 sq ft and under 2 stories in height without planning permission once they are outside of national parks. Every application for planning be it commercial or residential or agricultural goes through the planning departments already so why zone. No need & allowing people to build houses without the red tape makes everything far more efficient and allows the government to slim down.

I would abolish the Seanad, the presidency, local authorities & all quangos. Create half a dozen regional authorities with some things shared in a HQ. Cut down on duplication. Streamlined Government.

Open up and reform the insurance industry, electricity and reform upward only rents.
Voting rights for Irish abroad.

Now its your turn...............what would you do?

Not a bad set there, would agree with the vast majority of that except the lax planning proposals, but I like the idea of directly electing the Taoiseach and cabinet and with the abolition of the Seanad and Presidency. I know others will wail that we need these checks and balances but in practice, they do very little I feel. I think we should be able to elect the decision makers directly like you suggest.

I would certainly want to see an end to the PRSTV with multi seat constituencies system as we currently have. I (as I have alluded to elsewhere) would also want the regional assemblies and city councils to have real power and leave the Dail to making laws, which is what it should be doing.

I've been refused for planning by the county council and ABP but I would not want a free for all under any circumstances.

Deleted User wrote: »

Directly Elect the Taoiseach & Minister for Finance.

OK, so what happens if these two individuals can't work together, or have diametrically opposite views on how the the finances of the country should be ran?
Currently Enda Kenny can sack Michael Noonan if the latter decides that income tax of 98% is a good idea, or that the lower VAT rate should be reduced to 1%.
If Noonan was a directly elected MOF then what could Enda Kenny do about this?

Everyone does what they wish and leave it to survival of the fittest, cutting to the chase in effect.

The OP is not about reforming politics. Rather its a rag bag of personal demands that suit the OP and only the OP. It's certainly not "political reform" and reads like a collection of slogans with little or no grasp of what the issues are i.e. abolish all quangos when you know, alot of quangos actually do an important job like the medicines board. Moreso it mixes political reform with policy changes. Seriously OP, take a longer harder look at the issues rather then grabbing a few headlines from the Independent. There are usually good reasons for things being the way they are and it smacks of serious arrogence that you think you can fix the country with so brief knowledge. It's called populism and FF under bertie was the pinnacle of populist politics in this country.

If one is to have a debate on reforming Irish Politics one has to have a shared understanding of the facts (not opinions such as whether we need planning or now).

Starting with what a representative democracy is (which we have) which is probably the most representitive in the world with more. In fact, I am convinced that the over representation of interests like the OP's is the cause of our countries malaise (thats an opinion). For the most part representive democracy is used for a number of reasons:
1. Speed of decision making - electorate voting on every little issue would mean the state grinds to a halt very quickly.
2. Full time politicians have a better grasp (for the most part) of the issues since this is their full time job. Voters do not as the OP clearly shows).
3. Politicians should vote for the Common Good rather than the narrow self interest a voter would have (the OP and his one off house).

These are good solid reasons for not having direct democracy. Our idiotic repeat referendums are a classic example of this. Aside from speed, its obvious the general voter has no idea what they are voting for and contradict themselves by electing politicians who support the motion then vote against it and then vote the same politicians back in.

Take the US as an overall example. It is at the other extreme at a federal level. It is not a simple representive democracy but a constitional democracy where the power of the electorate is specifically curtailed to avoid a "tyranny of the majority". For example, nobody votes for the US president directly. There was no Barak Obama on any ballot given to US Citizens. Rather you vote a representitive on a college of electors. These people then vote for the president. Obviously you will probably know who the elector will be (either republican or democratic party, sometimes independent) but this system was put in place to avoid the opposite system which is very similar to Ireland....

The Weimer Republic - a liberal post WW1 democracy which had a lot of direct democracy elements. Where a certain Adolf Hitler used Direct democracy cunningly to restrict rights and become dictator.

Now look at a state level at California which is a proponent of direct democracy, the eighth largest economy in the world but with some of the worst infrastructure in the US an repeated government shutdowns. Why? Well when you get to vote directly on taxation (direct democracy) people have this curious tendancy to vote for less tax. Amazing I know! Is this really what you want? Essentially whoever can create the biggest interest group wins. This occurs to an extent in Ireland now with our over representation and far to large an influence on civil servents and other professionals in the state sector.

We need controls and counter weights, like for instance An Bord Planala/An Taisce and indeed the EU, to prevent or slow down bad policies such as procribed by the OP (the end of planning despite the serious evidence that one of housing is destroying the country side and building up huge social problems for the state).


So my question is, do we have too much "democracy" in Ireland. Can we ratchet back the influence of people like the OP and others who have written down their rag bag me fein list. Can we replace these rather unknowledgable pronouncements and replace them with professional planners, professional economists, professional managers who might make mistakes from time to time but would in the main be informed by the COMMON GOOD and disregard bad policies from gombeen politics?

later12 wrote: »

Nobody votes for the Taoiseach or the Ministers.
Individuals essentially vote for electors who will subsequently elect the Government.

In that sense, the US electoral system for the head of government strongly resembles the Irish system for the head of government.

Which nullifies the above argument, I would suggest.

Well the OP's argument was that we should directly elect the executive. I'm showing that despite what many think, the head of the US executive is not directly elected for the very reasons the OP outlined. That was the point, not so much an argument.

later12 wrote: »

Which is apropos of nothing.

Perhaps we should ban politicians with moustaches as well. After all, Hitler had a moustache, didn't he.

True, but my point is that conventional wisdom in this country is that the more democratic something is the better it is. I'm simply showing that there are terrible examples of direct democracy where the electorate have been manipulated by populist referenda. Direct democracy /= better results.

later12 wrote: »

That hasn't quite been the Swiss experience, where people have been known to vote in favour of higher taxes and even an increase in the price of bread.

A more recent example from Switzerland
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/world/2012/0312/1224313152760.html

Which may not follow any more than the Weimer republic example. California would be a better example then Switzerland for Ireland, especially when you consider the Canton approach of the Swiss (so the Swiss directly see the results of their additional or reduced taxes) There have also been results (such as the ban on minarets) which are very controversial and one could argue that minoraties are not protected from populist votes in the swiss example. All debatable I agree.

later12 wrote: »

And why would the latter group be any less interested in self promotion than the former group?

On this I agree with you. Any system depends on checks and balances. This is the nub of any debate on reforming the Irish Political system. I absolutely agree that if you tilt the system too far in any direction you will find some group takes advantage of it. I also think we need to look at local politics and local taxation. If people could directly vote on local matters but felt the results of these through increased or decreased taxation you might have a more considered electorate such as the swiss.