Semper Idem

After a bit of a break, blogging has resumed but at a different location:

http://www.semper-idem.eu

O’Driscoll and Leamy possibly injured.

Fuck.

I’m going to be doing most of my blogging on politics and the like over on the Library Bar Forum - a Fine Gael oriented blog - going forward. I’m not sure as of yet what will become of this corner of the internet.

Given the talk there has been of an increased turnout, but wary of the hash that was made of electoral turnout, I decided this morning to get an idea of the overall turnout. For whatever reason, I couldn’t find the overall national turnout figures anywhere, but using Election Ireland’s figures for each constituency, I got to the figure of 2,072,160 for the total national poll (including spoilt votes). This was up 10.3% on 2002, when 1,878,069 people came out to vote.

As with the 2002 figures, the difficulty is figuring out from the Census how many people are eligible to vote (you can get figures for the age groups, for nationalities but not for both). However, based on the population growth of those described as Irish in some various way, and also of an UK nationality of 2.5% between 2002 and 2006, I think it is fair to say that there has been a notable increase in turnout on this occasion.

The media have been reporting across the board that we had a high turnout today. However, from the initial reporting this is all based on percentages, and as such given the culling of the register that has taken place, it is conceivable that turnout in absolute numbers may not be up as much as is being touted.

Worth bearing in mind and considering when the commentary on this election is being written. What might be seen as a much greater public participation in the election, may be nothing more than a marginally more accurate electoral register.

The Cedar Lounge Revolutionaries have a good piece on canvassing, which is well worth a read. One thing I would add, is never to presume the age of a teenager. The other day, Dominic Hannigan was out canvassing in Ratoath, and his canvassers hit the family door. My sister answered, and was greeted, and then proceeded to be asked if her parents were in.

Tut, tut.

She took great joy in highlighting, that she was scrapping a vote by 4 days, turning 18 on the 20th. There are few ways to make sure in alienating a young voter.

McDowell probably won it for pure energy and hammering home his points, but he did nothing to appeal to anyone but his own core vote. Rabbitte would probably be happiest, while he didn’t have a debating victory, he came across as very much above the fray. He was calm and collected, defended himself well, and came across very competently on those moments when the issues were discussed.

Adams and Sargeant were not at the races.

Harry McGee has a gone and quickly done review on his own site. Excellent thread on it on politics.ie.

I have previously argued that we have seriously underestimated electoral turnout in this country in the past, by just over 2%. This was largely the result of an outdated register, with large double counting, registration of dead people and the like. While the clean-up of the register was not exactly perfect, it is in a much better position than it was before. As such, I would expect a more accurate representation of electoral turnout in this election.

Which brings me on to this, Paddy Power’s election betting website, and one bet in particular - electoral turnout. Now, if the turnout was 62.6% in 2002, on a register in a much worse position than the one today, in an election which was predecided bar who would be get to be FF’s bitch, sorry junior government party. This time out we have a genuine alternative, a real choice for the people to make, and from the reaction on the doorstep people are engaging in this election compared to last time out.

As such, I would expect at least a 3% increase in turnout and think there is a lot of value to be hand at the top end of the spectrum - particularly if the weather stays good.

This weekend say the electoral battlefield change for myself and a few other Young Fine Gael members, as we travelled to Stockholm for the bi-annual congress of the Youth of the European People’s Party (YEPP). YEPP is the youth wing of the European People’s Party, and represents 50 youth political parties from all corners of Europe (both inside and outside of the EU).

The congress was the sixth in YEPP’s history and marked the tenth anniversary. As such, it was appropriate that it took place, as the current Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt was the first President of YEPP and as such is the shining example of the potential of the organisation. The main portion of the Congress kicked off on Friday, with an address from Prime Minister Reinfeldt, and the rest of that day consisted a number of addresses on topics from Gambling in a Common Market to the building of the Swedish coalition. There were a number of interesting points raised, and I hope to be able to return to them soon. In particular, the discussion on a possible single market on gambling was interesting. The implications of possible gambling reform on the Irish market haven’t largely been considered over here, and are very much worthy of consideration.

However, the meat of the Congress is on the Saturday when the board of YEPP is elected - which always involves a large amount of canvassing, horse-dealing and nail biting. The board has 14 members; a president; 1st vice-president; treasurer; secretary general; deputy secretary general; and 9 vice-presidents. As you can imagine getting elected to the board is quite difficult, as there are 50 member organisations with a weighted voting system. So, you go from organisations with 1 vote to 13, and YFG coming in the middle with 5. In addition to this, there are a large number of different blocs within the organisations which make the elections quite difficult, as there is a consistent need to maintain a careful balance on the YEPP board between these blocs: between the big and small organisations; the Christian Democrats and Conservatives; as well as a good geographic spread on the board.

However, despite the difficulties, James Lawless (YFG’s International Secretary) was successful in getting elected as one of the vice-presidents in a very tight race. James follows in a strong line of previous Irish YEPP board members, which includes two candidates in the current general election; Lucinda Creighton and Leo Varadkar. This was a very good victory for Young Fine Gael, as we had not been represented on the previous board, and hopefully a good omen for the election campaign. Indeed, given the calibre of people who have represented YFG in YEPP, I would not be hugely suprised to see one of the them emulate Fredrik Reinfeldt’s success.

The Cedar Lounge Revolution enjoys a good and deserved reputation, as one of the better places for political writing in the Irish blogosphere. Smiffy’s recent discussion on abortion rights is certainly a fine example of what the good quality writing that marks their page, but one piece puzzled me - something which further puzzled me when I saw it repeated on politics.ie. Essentially, the claim was that:

According to the most comprehensive study undertaken on this subject, 51% of people support the availability of abortion in all circumstances (compared to 39% in some circumstances and 8% under no circumstances) - Irish Contraception and Crisis Pregnancy Survey, CPA, Sept 2004.

I would have largely subscribed myself to, as Smiffy outlines, “the received wisdom which is repeated over and over that the Irish people oppose abortion …; [and] that the Irish people don’t want another referendum on it”. As such, I was a bit puzzled by this survey which suggested that the received wisdom was all wrong - that a massive proportion of the Irish people were presumably willing to legislate for abortion and support whatever constitutional amendment was needed for it.

However, heeding Smiffy’s own advice, I took a look at the document on which he bases his view , the ICCP report from 2004. It would seem that, naturally enough, this survey confined itself to those most relevant to their discussions on contraception - those aged 18 to 45 - and not to the population or electorate at large.

The sample to be included were those aged 18-45, in order to focus on those for whom contraceptive practices, service perceptions and service usage were most relevant to contemporary evaluation of services and planning for the future. Interviews were completed with quota sampling based on 2002 Census figures for gender, age, educational attainment, employment status and region. A sample size of 3,000 was targeted, to include equal numbers of women and men.

So, while the survey is an interesting guide to the views of the portion of the electorate most likely to effected by the issue, it is not a hugely reliable guide to judge the view of the people at large. As such, the views as outlined by joemomma would probably give a more accurate overview of situations as it stands, and what those who favour a change to the current regime need to do.

Fine Gael have launched their manifesto today, and more details on it can be found here. Seamus Brennan, the man who wrote Jack Lynch’s manifesto which bankrupted this country in the late 70s, early 80s was first out of the blocks, with this stunning rebuttal:

The Fine Gael Manifesto is a blueprint for economic and social regression.

Implementation of the Fine Gael Manifesto would deliver 1,000 less Gardai onto our streets and 1,500 less acute beds in our hospitals, than the Fianna Fáil option.

The Irish people are more ambitious than that.

This Manifesto is a blueprint for economic regression.

That is the rebutall, in full. Stunning stuff, if that is all that is that FF can find wrong with the manifesto (i.e. that FF have promised more hospital beds and guards- and if you believe those promises…), then there are few enough problems with it.

If ever one wonders how someone like CJH could survive so long as leader in Fianna Fail when supposedly the dogs in the street knew he was up to his eyeballs in other men’s money; if people are wondering in a few months why Bertie will survive as leader of FF, after our suspicions will most likely be confirmed in the next few weeks; then take a look at the following from diarmydotnet - a hardcore Irregular blog.

My opinion? If Mr. Ahern received any money while Minister for Finance, he deserved it - because if it helped him come to power then we can all be grateful for it - as he has created the single-most influential and envied economy the world over. A tiger economy that matured well and is still going strong and is being actively copied all over the world in developing nations. He is truly a great man and his goodness far out-weighs any mishaps that occurred during a Fine Gael government in the 1990s.

Interesting story reached my ears this night. Seems that the Bertie’s Team posters (the posters with Bertie’s mug on them, not the other FF posters) in my patch of South Meath have disappeared since yesterday. I’m just back from a canvass in Kilkenny, so haven’t had a chance to take a good look yet; there were a few spots where there were such posters last week - I’ll take a look over the next few days, and report back.

Edit: Seems my tip-off didn’t amount to much. There doesn’t seem to be any about in Ratoath, along stretches of the N3, but over in Ashbourne Bertie is out in force.

So, it would seem that the Progressive Democrats won’t be pulling out of government this time, because it would serve no purpose to pass the Ministries of Justice and Health over to people not familiar with the portfolio. Very selfless.

This whole affairs doesn’t reflect well on the PDs. It would seem that they are effectively pulling out of government, but without the backbone to actually do it. But whatever chance they had of benefiting out of this farce is gone. They have cut their umbilical cord with Fianna Fáil, but by not leaving government whatever slim chance they had of repositioning themselves with the opposition is gone. Facing into the election, they are in the worst position possible for a party which depends on the prospect of power - they are the party no one will do business with.

. While they have not pulled out, the PDs have removed themselves from the prospect of being in government with FF next time out. While this was not a realistic opportunity given the polls, it was the government being put to the people as could be seen from Bertie Ahern’s rhetoric in this election campaign. With this option gone, Fianna Fáil will need to present themselves as being a government party before the election - to prevent a possible avalanche in public support which would occur if they were seen to be a unrealistic prospect for government next time. As such, I would still propose that the analysis below may well come to pass.

So, it would seem that the Progressive Democrats are about to walk. Presumably, the PD leadership have taken the view that this course of action will highlight their moral backbone, and serve as a potentially rejuvenating force for their electoral ambitions. Returning the PDs to the high moral ground and allowing the PDs to maintain their current number of Dáil seats.

But, you really cannot see that course of events bearing out. They have now effectively alienated their patrons. It is worth remembering that the inclusion of the PDs in the current government was not really necessary. If Bertie Ahern had wanted, as many in his party did, to go it alone with the support of independents he could well have done so. But he did, and Mary Harney and Michael McDowell have shown themselves to be appreciative of the fact in past - most notably in their limp response to the initial flowering of the current fiasco. And in return, they have provided a hint of ethical sheen to the excesses of FF, a useful if albeit rusting mudguard.

But if this mudguard, and until now loyal partner leaves FF, where now for everyone? While FF and the PDs have gone to the country without a common platform, it was clear that both sides of the government saw themselves as part of the same ticket. It is worth remembering that on that Sunday long, long ago when the election was called, Ahern spoke of the Irish public facing “two very different alternatives”, presumably speaking of the current government and Fine Gael and Labour. But now it would seem that one of those alternatives is a dead duck, at least as long as FF keep Ahern on as leader.

The PDs have managed over the past five years to paint themselves emphatically as FF lackeys, and greedy right wingers in the eyes of most other political parties - the result of which is that they are now without any possible partners in the run up to the next election. As a niche party, they have unusually thrived on power; their success in ‘02 was helped greatly by the clear view from well out that FG were not at the races, and as such the PDs got a fair whack of votes from traditional FG voters seeking to maintain a centre-right eye on the government. But, on the back of recent opinion polls, the view is now established that a FG led government is possible, something which in places like Dun Laoghaire would eat into the PD vote and threatening their national relevance. Now, with the chances of the Progressive Democrats returning to government seeming remarkably slim (no party is going to now go near them before an election), it is possible that their support will desert them completely.

So, where will FF go now? Certainly, they will now move to butter up the Labour party. A FF/Labour government was always likely to be FF’s ticket back to power after this government. But such a deal was meant to have been after the election, and would have to be in the national interest. A deal which which will depend on characters, numbers and circumstances, and is most definitely not a certainty. Labour could quite easily rebel against such an arrangement, and are not going to give it much credence before polling day.

This creates a problem for FF. A present, they could present themselves as the outgoing government - now they cannot. The spectre of an overall majority is one that doesn’t play with the electorate, and is a laughable idea on current polling numbers. It is difficult to imagine that Fianna Fáil will be successfully in going to the people on a basis not dissimilar to Fine Gael in 2002, saying that it will be all right on the night, that something will be sorted out. And in this scenario, the spectre of a FF/Sinn Fein government will always be on the cards.

Certainly, if Bertie Ahern wished to pursue such an option, the opening of the Assembly and his speech in Westminster would give him the opportunity to do so. A speech welcoming Sinn Féin fully and finally to the democratic fold would have a nice historic ring, and would easily pave the
way to allowing FF to consider government with them. But, Bertie won’t do that. It would frighten many of the middle class horses away altogether, so he couldn’t do it explicitly.

But he will need to keep his options open with regard to Sinn Féin; one would expect the current leadership of Labour and the Greens over the coming days refuse government with Bertie Ahern as Taoiseach. FF are too cute an animal to dump a leader in the run up to an election with the posters all up, they are too proud a best to dump a leader on the instruction of a junior partner and will not thank any figure within the party who goes to push Ahern aside. SF are probably the least likely to talk themselves into a corner on government with Ahern as leader, given their upper echelons desire to be in government north and south - and the possibility of being in government may well improve their electoral prospects in many locations.

And while this is probably Ahern’s best chance of becoming Taoiseach for a third term after an election, and as such while we shouldn’t expect Ahern to publicly suggest a SF/FF government, don’t expect him to categorically rule it out. Which presents Fine Gael with an opportunity; if Labour can be kept onside over the next three weeks and the Greens continue on their present course, Fine Gael can paint this election as one between two alternatives. However, in this case, they would be Fine Gael and Labour, and FF/SF (with FG and Labour being supplemented by the Greens and FF/SF by the FF gene pool independents) - something which the conventional wisdom suggests would damage FF’s prospects.

This is just one possible way as to how things will play out -written Saturday night, based on the current rumours that the PDs will pull out of government, and the presumption that whatever it is wouldn’t cause Bertie Ahern’s resignation. Events, and facts, will as always prove me wrong.

So Enda Kenny owes “the public an explanation” about where FG print their posters. But Bertie Ahern doesn’t owe an explanation about his ‘interesting’ financial dealings. Good to know.

Over the past few years, I have been meaning to pay a visit to Athassel Abbey. There is a single signpost for the Abbey as you go through the village of Golden in County Tipperary and since I started driving myself I had seen it a every time I paid a visit to my grand-parents and cousins down in east Limerick. The name had been familiar to me as a place of importance in the Middle Ages in Munster, but I wasn’t fully sure what to expect and as such when I saw the sign post, always said that I’d go and take a look next time - like I mean to read Ulysses or learn Japanese.

On Sunday, I decided to take a look. A small boreen takes you about a mile and a bit outside the village, and just when I was losing faith in coming across something of interest. My lack of faith was misplaced when I saw the Abbey itself. Set into a field, a few hundred metres from the round it was easily accessible by foot. Effectively, what you have is the ruin of a massive religious settlement, very much from the 12th to 16th century period. Entering from the roadside, you have a marsh on the outside of the ruin of an enclosed area comprising a few acres. Inside this area you have the ruin of a huge church, andsurrounding it a number of other complexes such a side chapels including a hugely impressive cloister and the ruin of a number of other buildings.

Truly it was a hugely impressive site, and a massive surprise. And it is a crying shame that such surprises are still common-place in this country with regard to our heritage. Although the site was easily accessible, there was no attempt to explain the site, or take advantage of it. Throughout the country, the OPW have done good work in opening up many new sites to public access and should be commended for it. But so much more can, and should be done.

Athassel is easily as impressive a ruin as you will see, and it would be an excellent opportunity for heritage tourism to be brought from Cashel further into the county and could make an effective tourist trail- much as has be done in Meath, with Trim, Tara and Brú na Boinne (although more could be done by doing more with Bective Abbey & Newtown Trim - but that’s another day’s debate). In the interim, if you happen to be travelling through Golden, follow the signpost for Athassel Abbey - it will be well worth it.

Tipperary Libary has a small piece on the abbey here which gives a good overview of the place. I hope to get an opportunity (after the election) to do a bit of research into a few monuments like this around the country that I stumble across, and to put up what I find on this site.

With the first day of ‘offical’ electioneering, Enda Kenny’s leaders tour took him to Meath. By co-incidence, I had the day off work, so I went along to Dunboyne where he was due for a walk-about. It was very impressive. He started at the top of the town, and worked his way down through the town calling into a number of shops, and stopping to have a quick word with those out and about. And in comparision to the last time out in 2002, the response was very encouraging. Everyone seemed happy to stop and meet the man, with Enda exuding amazing energy and positivity. It bodes well for the the rest of the campaign.

The most interesting thing about Enda’s visit was the media presence, there were reporters, photographers and camera men in tow. They scrum they created whenever they entered any shop or had a photo-op was something else - few enough rugby players I play with would be up for it. Anyway, we have 23 days left, and things are looking good. FG and Labour have the momenteum at this stage, with Bertie seemingly on the run. Hopefully, we will carry through.

Amnesty International have just launched a campaign to highlight the continued repression of the opposition in Belarus, in particular the imprisonment of the youth political leader Zmitser Dashkevich. It is to the Europe Union’s shame that a regime which continues to deny basic political freedom exists on our border, and something which should be at the forefront of the EU’s agenda. For more details on this campaign, and to support it go to:

http://noise.amnesty.org

A few months back, I mentioned that Ashbourne Rugby club beat Roscrea and we were enjoying a good season. Well since then, things have moved along nicely since then. We have won Leinster’s Division Two (10 games played, 10 won) and have negogiated our way into the Leinster Towns Cup semi-final where we play Navan on Sunday.

Navan would be the traditional king-pins in Meath, and in our one Towns Cup final appearance back in ‘99, they beat us 18-10. They are a good outfit, with quality players as is shown by them putting in a strong league performance and finishing 3rd in Leinster’s Division One. So, they’ll fancy their chances.

There is a good buzz about the Ashbourne club at the moment and not just on the pitch. Off it the Club Committe have made great stides - this season, we have had floodlights installed for the 1st team pitch, opened an astro-turf pitch, and by September there will be 3 all-weather pitches at the club. The Chroncile have a write up of the match & all support on Sunday will be much needed. So if you are around the Skerries area Sunday and fancy seeing some good, committed parochial rugby head along to the Skerries Rugby Club for 3 O’Clock.

In his interview with the Examiner (available on Harry McGee’s blog), Bertie Ahern lays forward his argument on weekend voting:

My point about the Friday was that with the cleaning of he register, now people are meant to be registered where they are living. That includes students as well. If they are living in Dublin, they should be registered in Dublin

But, the point of all this is that many students don’t nessecarily ‘live’ where they are studying. If you are studying (or for that matter working) in Dublin, but returning ‘home’ at the weekend’s & when college is not in term, is it right to say that you live in Dublin - particularly as students and young workers frequently move houses? I cannot really see how you would claim that that person lives in Dublin, and not at their ‘home-place’ . It strikes me as a very narrow way to look at the issue (probably on account of Bertie Ahern’s background as a Dubliner), and not particularly reflective of how most of the people in that situation would view it.

In what I think was a first, the good burghers of Ratoath received a DVD in the door from Mary Wallace TD the other day. Probably being unique amongst those who received it, I actually watched it.

It is relatively well produced (it has a kind of vague Nationwide feel to it), although there would appear to be some quaility problems in my copy with with a ten second segment seemingly missing. The focus is on the towns of Ratoath, Ashbourne and Dunboyne and schools, industry, community facilities and transport all receiving mentions.

The lack of any substance to the 5-minute presentation beyond the ‘isn’t everything great’ line wasn’t particularly suprising, however what I thought was, was that the only reference in the whole thing to Fianna Fail was a logo at the end of the presentation whilst poor old Thomas Byrne (her erstwhile FF running mate in Meath East) failed to register at all. Nice to see that all is well within the FF camp.

As a final note, the DVD itself points people in the direction of www.marywallace.ie which at the time of writing only brings you to an website administrator page.

Following on from this, I’ve discovered that this site is top ranked for Meath East on Google. If you have stumbled across Semper Idem because of that, I’d encourage you to vote 1 & 2 for Regina Doherty & Shane McEntee.

Both are excellent candidates. In his two years in the Dáil, Shane McEntee has shown himself a strong and forceful advocate for Meath. Outside of that, he has been given the road safety brief and acquitted himself particularly well. His proposals last year in this area, the 6 Step Plan for Safer Roads and Safer Driving were clear, concise and if desired, easily implementable which would do something very definite in this area.

Regina Doherty comes from a successful business background and is a young mother. She is focusing primarily on the issues relating to child-care, provision of facilities for young families and children, and transport links in Meath. Both are very good and genuine candidates, and will be to a doorstep near you fairly soon, if they haven’t been already. So, if you are considering how you will vote in Meath East, stop and have a chat with them. Both will impress.

I just stumbled across the blog of Dara Calleary of Fianna Fail today - he is one of their candidates in Mayo for the general election. Quite by co-incidence, I also came across his name yesterday - from a news report in the Western People before the last election.

Ogra Fianna Fail is calling for a Saturday polling day for the forthcoming General Election to increase voter turnout and to facilitate young people in particular, said Dara Calleary, a Mayo member of the Fianna Fail National Youth Committee .
“If a Saturday Polling Day is not possible, Ogra is calling on the Government to set a Friday Polling Day, with Polling stations open until at least 11.00pm at night,” he said.
“Young people nowadays are more likely to be employed away from their constituencies. A result of the 70% increase in employment over the past 15 years is the huge number of young people commuting and living away from home. More young people are in third level education now than ever before. A Saturday poll would greatly help our effort in assisting students and young workers to return to their constituencies to vote,” he added.
“We are calling for General Elections, by-elections and referenda to be held on Saturday as part of strategy to halt the decline in voter turnout.

Interesting stuff - I presume he will be supporting his countyman’s proposals in this area. I wonder if Ógra FF’s views have changed in the meantime as well.

This whole Rainbow Splits malarkey that the PDs are at strikes me as odd. Obviously being different political parties, Fine Gael and Labour have different policies and views. The idea of a coalition is to find common ground, and govern together – both parties shouldn’t agree on everything, but once there is a substantial agreed common ground, then that will suffice.

That the PDs are making such a play about a few differences is altogether odd. Is the point of Rainbow Splits that themselves and FF are so compatible that there is no differences between the two? In effect, that the PDs are FF-lite? That is some proud boast.

Anyway, FG and Labour will be producing a joint manifesto fairly soon to give the voters a clear view of their proposals. When will we see the PD and Fianna Fail one, I wonder? Oh, yeah – our current government aren’t going to the people as a coalition, they aren’t producing any joint policies are documents to let us know what they will do in government together.

James Lawless, Young Fine Gael’s International Secretary endorses Sarkozy.

Robbie Keane is crap, over-rated, selfish, arrogant and fat. They are some of the comments which spring to mind, when I think of some of the things which Irish football fans throw at our captain. Possibly they are all true, and being a cantankerous sort I am defending the indefensible, but I just don’t see what he is doing (hugely) wrong.

Certainly, Robbie has not lived up to the hype which accompanied his meteoric passage as a teenager from Wolves to Coventry and onto Internationalize. He has not become the outstanding player from the British isles for his generation, something which possibly presented itself in his early years. But he has not done badly. If we compare him to the previously most feted teenage Irish footballer, Mark Kennedy, his career has been stellar. He is, with probably another six to ten years of international football ahead of him, comfortably Ireland’s top goalscorer, a leading and respected member of a fairly decent Tottenham team, a player who is good for 15-20 top-class goals across all competitions for the club and who contributes well to his team.

He has done this, having recovered from time at two of the world’s most dysfunctional clubs, Internationalize and their manager sacking, and the mad cash splurges of Risdale’s Leeds United.
Certainly, in his early days the constant moves did him little good, but the decision by Morrati to sack Tardelli so soon after he purchased Keane was probably the biggest set back. Tardelli quite clearly saw Keane, not primarily as a goalscorer and line leader, but as a Bergkampesque style ball-player. Unfortunately this side to his game has never really been developed, and for the period till the the arrival of Mido and Berbatov at Spurs he was often expected to lead the strike line. When he has this opportunity to play off another striker, and given a license to roam, he is in the main a fair superior and more influential player. Not just for his goal scoring, but for his link up play with wingers, his strike partners and oncoming midfielders.

But irrespective, he has made a decent fist of his career - and with any career has sought to maximise his earnings. And while his desire is frequently questioned, it is rarely done by Spurs fans but by us Irish. Certainly his willingness to whinge at refs and take tumbles is annoying, but his workrate cannot be questioned. While it infuriates those who wanted him to become Ireland’s Michael Owen, his game is not confined to hanging of the last defender, but on roaming across the strike line, picking up the ball deep, and supplementing the work of the midfield. That is his game, and his is good at it.

Unfortunately, for Ireland, much of this work is ignored. A perfect example is the commentary from Adam Maguire about him after today’s match:

I didn’t agree with Roy Keane’s rant on a Dublin bias in the FAI but I do agree with his point that some senior players are living off their past reputations. Robbie Keane is the single strongest example of this sickness with the RoI camp and from what I could see of his few attempts with the ball today (and in previous matches) he no longer has the nerve to be in the team, let alone lead it.

Robbie Keane does not operate in a vacum. In today’s match, he did not have a strike partner rather until the arrival of Kevin Doyle, well into the second half, he was expected to lead the line alone with Damien Duff flitting between both wings. In addition, with the exception of Stephen Ireland, none of the midfield were offering anything going forward - certainly nothing by way of attacking ball. But none the less, nearly everything of substance that Ireland mustered in that match has something major to do with Keane.

The goal was set up by a delightful Keane through ball. Duff’s decent first chance was manufactured by Keane’s harrying of defenders and another good through ball. Kevin Doyle’s volley off the post was from a Keane header, while Keane had two decent chances of his own. Bar a Kilbane header, no other non-Keane chance sprung to mind. This, with the midfield offering relatively little - is it really fair to expect Keane (or for that matter Duff, whose form is far more worrying) to manufacture stuff from thin air, to score every half-chance?

Despite what Maguire thinks, there is little to suggest that Keane does not have the ‘nerve’ to be in the team. Given the circumstances, he played well and with Doyle there is the possiblity of a good strike partnership developing over the coming years. Anyway, who would we replace him with Anthony Stokes on the back of a superb half season with Falkirk? Caleb Folan? David Connolly? John Flynn? Sean Long? Roy O’Donovan? Stephen Ward? Andy Keogh? At this stage of their careers, there is nothing to suggest that any of those players would offer anything close to what Keane offers Ireland?

The other aspect of this, is the claim that he lacks the ‘nerve’ to lead the team. I don’t play soccer competitively since underage, so in the six/seven years since my last game it is possible that the role of captain has changed radically. It involves choosing a side of a coin, and that is about it - other than that there is nothing to it. There is a superfical role as a figurehead, and while it may be instructive to have a motivational genius at the helm, calling him captain is irrelevant. Does anyone think that players like Shay Given or Richard Dunne speak less because they don’t carry the captain’s arm band? If they are leadership material, they will lead, irrespective of what is on their arm. After all, did Roy Keane’s leadership come from his captaincy of club or country from his armband, or from the man? To critisce him for poor leadership in this regard is utterly pointless - their may be a lack of leadership skills within the team, but if so, the manager should look to supplement it. The focus on the captain is, furthermore, a concept unique to British football in the main, as many of the interviews with non-British based players would pay testament to.

In my view, Robbie Keane comes in for a raw deal from Irish supporters. Watching the Czech match today, it is not difficult to imagine how effective he would be in a team with midfielders the quality of Rosciky and company, and if we look at the attacking options other international teams have, there are few outside the top handful, who he would not fit into. If we tempered our expectations to reflect the player that he is - a talented attacker, who is as likely to contribute goals as score them - rather than expect perfection from him, we would being to appreciate the player that he is. One of the most talented players to play for his country. But it is most unlikely that we will see that anytime soon. Why? Because it would seem that many within the Irish soccer media have a dislike of Robbie Keane - presumably he refused some of them an interview once too often. And as long as that prism remains clouded, so will all our views remain so.

So, after Saturday how are we to look at Irish rugby? Certainly in twenty years time we will look back at this Six Nations with a certain wistfulness. Like much of Eddie O’Sullivan’s tenure, it is a case of what should have been, rather than what was. But while the failure to win a Championship, or as was clear from the players, the failure to win the Grand Slam is something to be disappointed about, the World Cup is where things are at - and after this Six Nations are we any better off?

I am not certain if we are. Coming into the Six Nations, it was clear that fully fit, and fired up, Ireland are, with France, the best that the Northern Hemisphere has to offer. After the Six Nations, the same is true - that was never going to be in doubt. But one would be inclined to view that Ireland have stagnated, whereas the French have not. In no match, were the French overly impressive, yet at nine and ten they have strong new options, and in two pressure matches have shown an ability to take things to the line, and over it. In the context of a group where it is likely that things will go down to the line, their ability to take injuries to top class players, and survive is similarly important.

In comparison, we still know that fully fit, Ireland are a challenge for anyone. But the belief that we are paper thin in certain compartments is further strengthened. We failed to develop options in any of the key positions, and the idea of using the Tour of Argentina to find out if we have options is far too late. We still don’t know if Paddy Wallace offers anything at 10, and nothing sums up the failure to trust players outside the core 18 or 20, than what happens at centre. Shane Horgan is a quaility winger, and a very fine footballer. He offers something at centre, but is not at his best there, and offers far more on the wing.

Trimble in comparison is a centre, a fine centre, who offers something on the wing. Now, against France the decision was bottled and Horgan was rushed back to play in a position he was not a 100% on. Given the match, it may have made sense to make that call with Horgan’s experience. But even in the last twenty minutes of the Italy match, when O’Driscoll went off, we saw Trimble come on - not to his natural positioning, but rather onto the wing. And rather than a straight swap with Trimble slotting in, we have Horgan move to inside centre, D’Arcy to the outside, and Trimble to the wing. Three changes, where one would have done. And not only would have done against an Italy on the back foot, but would have shown if Trimble can do damage in that position. Is Eddie’s view of Trimble such that he believes he offers nothing but pace and power and cover for the wing? If so, is he really a better option on the bench than Murphy?

As long as we have a coach who is innately conservative, we are going to suffer when cracks emerge - as they certainly will in the World Cup. I am not asking for whole-sale changes and development tours - we don’t have the quality and depth for that. But the least we can do, is try fringe players out occasionally. And lest we forget, the two finest Irish players in this Six Nations were outcasts under EOS previously. Both D’Arcy and Wallace suffered exile at the hands of EOS, which should serve to remind him that occasionally there are quality players outside his core group. Ireland didn’t ‘choke’ in this Championship, however EOS is choking quality by not even occasionally experimenting. And with the World Cup only a few months away, that could be the biggest problem for Irish rugby.

It was another bad election for the UUP, but surely the younger generation would have a bit of fight left in them? Possibly not, as their occasionally interesting website would now seem to be defunct.

Edit: They’re back up and running - their site seemed to be expired for a period this evening, presumably just a temporary blip.

Judging from his column in the Irish Times last week, and a subsequent radio show, Vincent Browne has a delightfully simplistic view of electoral advantage. As is fairly obvious from his column’s title, ‘How to rig election properly’ [sic], his view is that through expenditure on electioneering, politicians can gain an unfair advantage. This is primarily based around the fact that campaigning expenses prior to the election being called, are largely unregulated. So grave is this problem that Vincent states:

This means that parties and candidates can spend, between them, millions and millions, in biasing the democratic system in their favour, in subverting the principle of equality captured in the phrase “one person, one vote”.

Superficially, one would be inclined to agree. But the more I think about it, the more I am disinclined to accept this viewpoint. Despite his charmingly naive view-point as outlined above, democracy is not that straight-forward. Money is a factor which can potentially skew an election, but even if candidates were banned from spending full-stop it would not make elections that hugely more fair.

Eugene Reagan, a very capable individual from what I hear, is the ‘bad-guy’ in Browne’s piece - but coming to the election as an individual without a massive public profile, why should he not be allowed to spend money to boost that profile?

If we take another Fine Gael candidate, this time in Louth, we have Mairead McGuinness. I’m sure if McGuinness were not to spend a penny on her campaign, the public profile she has, coupled with the resulting media coverage would place her at an advantage over his rival candidates. Or, if we look at many rural strong candidates primarily form FF or FG, they have strong familial and personal connections who form a basis of people who will go out and campaign for them - giving them a massive basis which is often not open to other candidates. This form of implicit advantage is most clearly seen with incumbent TDs - who rightly or wrongly have a massive head-start on their fellow contestants. In the main, those who spend substantial amounts on personal campaigns prior to the election being called are those who are not sitting TDs or major public figures, but rather people seeking to build up their public persona - is that a perversion of democracy, or rather a crude method to level a totally unfair playing field? I would tend to the later.

But even beyond that, why is election expenditure viewed entirely as sinful, while other forms of donations are not? While there is the issue of improper influencing of politicans, there is an unfairness in not allowing people to make cash donations of a certain level, but not monitoring donations of a far more effective kind in the locally based Irish political system - time. For example, politicians with strong support in certain groups such a students or retired people can get a disproportionate amount of ‘time’ from their supporters. However, a person who may previously have donated five hours a week to a candidate when they were in college will not be in a position to do the same when they are holding down a job, with a family, a garden to tend to, etc, etc.

Yet in the world of Vincent Browne, and the manner in which our spending limits are enforced, the PR guru who gave his time to a candidate when they were younger as a volunteer, can not give an equivalent support in monetary terms to the same candidate, and indeed would be frowned upon for doing so. Or alternatively, a retired person with forty years experience of organising can offer their services as a volunteer to their favoured candidate free of charge and do a ten hour week for the candidate, but for them five years previous to donate the money for the candidate to fill that gap for six-months, and it would be illegal under our donations rules.

While a case can be made that the above donations of ‘time’ should be governed by the current legislation it has not been the case as of yet. In the Irish political context, money can have a substantial effect, but it has not yet been demonstrated that in our multi-party seat system that it is a decisive factor. Certainly, other factors such as existing profile, familial and personal connexions who will come out and campaign for you are equal if not more important - and if we are not going to limit those, why should we seek to limit the most transparent of all of those factors, cash?

And if we look at Vincent’s main complaint, that an inability to raise the same level of financing as other candidates, may put minority interest candidates, or candidates from a disadvantaged background at a loss. That may be so, but if those candidates don’t have substantial personal or party networks to call on, or their own existing personal profile, they will be at a similar if not greater loss - and is that any more right?

Compared to the offerings here, Nicolas Sarkozy’s web presence is far superior, and one interesting aspect is his NS TV offering which provides video coverage of different aspects of Sarkozy’s campaign, as well as testimonies in his support from French citizens and also international leaders. Some of it is available in English and can be found here. There is a good segment here which I have below which touches on Sarkozy’s interesting relationship with the US.

A visit to the website of Labour Youth came up with this gem. Calling for the nationalistation of the Corrib Gas Field, their President Patrick Nulty stated:

The Corrib gas which was given away to Shell for free must immediately be returned to the Irish people, so that cheap and affordable gas can be supplied to Irish homes. At the same time the profits from the gas sales could be used to end hospital waiting lists, deliver free GP care and be invested in education.

If only everything else in Irish politics, was so simple and straight-forward.

I wouldn’t be the most hard-core of Irish football fans, but for various reasons I ended up in San Marino cheering on the Boys in Green last week. The less said about that match the better, but flicking through the newspapers on my return I came across a quote from another member of Steve Staunton’s army of supporters (Irish Independent) about San Marino:

“We’re in the hotel at the top of the road and when the mist lifts the views are spectacular. So there is that. But not much else.”

I would have to disagree. Prior to the match last Wednesday about eight of us headed on to San Marino to take a look around. And it was well worth it. Whilst there is plenty of climbing around the town, there is plenty to see for an afternoon - it is well laid out, and provided one doesn’t mind some steep steps you can get around easy enough. And the views are spectactular, especially from the early modern towers at the top of the town with gives a commanding view of the Republic and the surronding areas. Well worth a day trip, certainly in February there is far more to the place than neighbouring Rimini.

The Meath Heritage Forum published earlier this month a draft of the Meath Heritage Plan for 2007 to 2011. I’ve a strong interest in this area, in particular in how the county has failed to adequately exploit its massive medieval heritage (in particular in Trim), so I hope to take a good look through it and maybe make a submission (deadline of Friday 23rd of February).

On a similiar note, the Meath Archaeological and Historical Society have just published their 2007 journal. I haven’t purchased a copy yet, but the Meath Chronicle provides an overview what is in it, and it looks like it will be well worth a read.

Fair play to Councillors Naoise O’Muiri and Lucinda Creighton (amongst others on Dublin City Council) on the free Wi-Fi from Dublin proposals, one’s which have been in the pipeline for a while. Although it would seem that the service to be offered will be below the market offering, it will provide a basic offering freely available to those that frequent the city centre. In an era where access to the net is becoming ever more important in allowing citizens get access to information, access to net should not be solely dependent on people’s ability to pay - rather a certain level of it in years to come will be seen as a basic civic right. Indeed, it wouldn’t be too difficult to imagine initiatives such as this being comparable to public libararies currently - providing a basic level of information access to all, irrespective of wealth.

It would seem that I was wrong. Not only have my thoughts on what Leinster and Munster should do if they both get a home-draw in the Heineken Cup proven wildly misplaced, but my previous pessimism with regards to the political classes on immigration has also been shown up. Thankfully, in the case of the later it looks like what I hoped for, but feared would not, may well happen.

For a wide variety of fairly obvious reasons, we need a ‘genuine national debate on immigration‘. As can be seen from my of our European counter-parts, the failures to deal with immigration in the long term can have serious repercussions; for both the immigrants and their descendants and society at large. This can all be seen quite clearly, and on a number of different levels from places like France, the Netherlands, Germany, the UK and Austria. In the main, those countries slept walked into allowing large numbers of immigrants to arrive and settle without ever giving it much thought, or having any form of national consensus on the issue.

Up until now, the Irish establishment have taken the same approach. ‘Immigration has been all gain for the state’ to quote one commentator, and there has been precious little discussion about how Irish society will engage with the immigrant community. For fear of being tarnished with the race card, politicians have been reluctant to engage with this debate, if one needs a reminder of this fear, look no further than the hysterical reaction to Pat Rabbitte’s fairly reasonable comments on EU immigration into this state.

Therefore, the willingness of the Leader of the Opposition to put forward a clear and reasoned argument on this subject, and to sustain it, is welcome. Enda put forward a clear view of the issue, and to his and Fine Gael’s objective ” is to ensure that immigration remains a positive experience for our society and our economy”. As long as this country remains prosperous, we will have immigrants -that is a certainty - and the issue is managing those immigrants who come into this state so that they integrate best into Irish society.

Enda put forward a reasonable platform in that regard. In particular immigrants need to be given the skills to integrate into Irish society, primarily the ability to communicate successfully with everyone else and that can only be achieved by learning the English language. This is something which must be a priority for the Irish education system, to equip immigrants and their off-spring with the most basic tool with which to become full and active citizens. However the current situation fails them, and also fails English speaking students. As Enda states

The current system for allocating language support teachers is not serving the interests of these children. It provides that schools with 14 non-English speaking pupils are awarded one language support and those with 28 or more receive a second but a third post can only be granted in exceptional services. These rules take no account of the reality of the new situation in which many schools have far more than 28 non-English speaking pupils. I am aware of one school in west Dublin which has over 200 non-national pupils but just two language support teachers, plus one additional, discretionary teacher. Even where adequate support is available, it is only available to each child for two years which is not enough in many cases.

No only do non-English speaking students in many cases not get the resources needed, it means that many English speaking students, in particular those that need the most help from their teachers are suffering as scarce resources as spread too thinly.

Furthermore, important mention was given to the issue of non-nationals and road safety, something which has become an issue in many places in the greater Dublin area with large immigrant populations. It would appear from general conversation with those form Eastern Europe that the attitudes to drink-driving and road safety would appear to be largely consistent with the beliefs of most people over 40. For their sake, and for the sake of other road users, a strong education campaign must be carried out to inform immigrants of the rules of the road here, and what standards are expected. If immigrants are seen by society at large to be ignoring the rules of the road, and causing accidents (as is the perception amongst many people I have spoken to) then it will lead to hostility to the immigrant community, largely undeserved as these people are following norms that are accepted in their own society, and have not been adequately educated as to what is expected here.

Finally, immigrant must remain a positive force, and with that in mind, it must be seen to complement not challenge the existing workforce. Something which is vitally important, if people are to accept immigrants as equals in Irish society. If immigrants are allowed to be exploited, as was perceived to be the case in the Irish Ferries staffing dispute, at the expense of Irish workers, then there will be a back-lash. Indeed, as the vast, vast majority of immigrants are highly educated, the challenge is to get the best use out of them for themselves and also for economy and society at large. Having them work at below market rates, is good for no-one.

With regard to the national debate, I have been enthused by some of the reaction. Certainly his performance on the Last Word, and the subsequent debate on the issue the next day was encouraging. The failure of some to comprehend the positivity of the twin message of a Celtic and Christian people was disappointing (something I will soon return to), and the willingness of those commentators to get distracted by that brief cursory mention, rather than engage with the debate was telling. But whilst the Irish Times failed with regard to the former, I was encouraged by their response to Kenny’s call:

Despite the furore that Mr Kenny’s prepared speech has caused, the bulk of it was positive and constructive in tone. Proposals, such as the provision of adequate English language teaching for children and adults and the appointment of a Minister of State with overall responsibility for the integration and protection of immigrants in our society, are good for Irish society. Irish identity has grown and developed with time and circumstance. The immigrant population is now 10 per cent of the population as a whole. For this reason, Mr Kenny is right to call for a debate on this important issue during the election campaign. Any shying away from it by the political parties suggests that it is so sensitive that it cannot be discussed. It would be a shame that political correctness would prevent us from discussing the greatest demographic change in our history.

Unfortunately, while there will be legitimate critiscms of the speech, there is also be the reactionary response from the usual quarters. In that regard, it was unsurprising to read that the voice of Lower Mount Street wasn’t too impressed with it into today’s Irish Times, whilst unsurprisingly a few clowns decided to shout racist - something which no reading of the speech could substantiate.

As both someone with an interest in this topic, and also an active Fine Gael members, I am pleased with Enda Kenny’s speech. This is quite possibly the most important issue facing this state since the issue of emigration in previous generation. The failure to get this issue right can result in huge societal issues for years to come, therefore it is important that we debate the issues of immigration and integration, and reach a national consensus.

The lads on the RTE are pondering the question of what to do if Leinster and Munster quailify for the quarter-finals. For all the talk of the GAA stadia, that is not a runner and should be accepted as such . So what is one to do?

My own view is we should go for a double-header in the UK if possible, in a 60k plus stadium like the Millenium Stadium. Home draws are realistic for both provinces but if they go individually it would be difficult for either of them to do justice to much more than a 20k capacity stadium over in England. However, together, I think there would be more than enough interest to make a serious impact on a stadium like the Millenium - particularly if the opposition was Welsh or English.

Even if only one of the teams got a home quailifer, provided the other team was drawn against a Welsh or English club the same could work. At the time of writing, Munsterfans have the following line-up (which will obviously change):

Biarritz v Northampton
Leinster v Stade
Llanelli v Munster
Wasps v Leicester

A Leinster/Llanelli home double header at the Millenium would strike me as a clever way for both teams to make a lot of cash - certainly more than would be possibly for Leinster to play in Ravenhill or some place like Reading or for Llanelli at Stradley Park.

My demands of rugby boots are not overly demanding, once they last one season from the end of September until early April I’m happy. They should be knackered by then, and I’ll throw them out and with that in mind, I have been well served by a number of different Mizuno boots over the past few seasons. This year, on my annual pilgrimage for boots, they were out of Mizuno and therefore I went with Canterbury.

Now this was my own fault. Last year I bought a pair of their boots which lasted one match due to a tear across the boot which opened them up. I returned them to Elvery’s after that match, who refused to refund me on them (which meant another outlay of cash for new boots), then after some protesting on my part, they returned them to Canterbury, which after about two months resulted in a credit note. So I should have known better, but they are Canterbury of New Zealand no less, so surely they would be on top of this whole rugby boots malarkey.

Unfortunately, second time out they have also proven to be pure muck. Within six weeks, one of the stud screws was gone at the back. Within two months the fabric on one of the boots was torn at the heal, whilst yesterday the lace hole system (something unnecessarily complex) decided to snap, meaning a whole roll of insulation tape was used to allow me to get any use from the boot.

So, whilst one may hand it to Canterbury for their other rugby related apparel, their boots are to be avoided in this second row’s book. Back to Muzuno for me. Speaking of which, the best pair of boots I have ever hand are a pair of Hi-Tec moulded boots which I got for football when I was about 15 for £15 - they have survived (just about) to this day.

I was half-way through writing a piece on the evils of Sam Smyth, and planning to turn my eyes towards the ridiculous over-reaction of the Greens towards perfectly considerate comments from Enda Kenny, when I discover Sarah Carey had done both. Better and perfectly in sync with what I wanted to say. Ah well.

It is just the first step, but Young Fine Gael have decided to run a candidate for the forthcoming NUI Seanad election. This is an interesting departure for ourselves in recent times, and gives us a great a new opportunity to deliver our message. Elections are difficult times for youth political groups, while eager to stress their independence it is often difficult (and frequently undesirable) to do so in the context of a general election.

The NUI election will offer us an opportunity to present our message on our own basis. For the forthcoming election we will have our own manifesto, and this will form the background to any candidates campaign. In addition to our general policy work, we will also develop on our previous calls for Seanad reform to help make the body relevant to general public at large.

But as importantly as anything else in this, it is an opportunity for us to reconnect with past YFG members. For many varied reasons, a fair proportion of all YFGers in college don’t make the transition to the senior party. This is our opportunity to reconnect with a large proportion of them, and hopefully get them back into the Fine Gael family.

With the selection of the candidate to take place at the forthcoming YFG Pre-Election Conference in early February, the first emails seeking support are doing the rounds. Hopefully we will have an open and vigorous campaign for YFG support in this - the idea would be for a candidate to endorse the YFG message and accept it, not necessarily for them to be active current members.

Flicking through Munsterfans.com, it is amazing how many people seem to have seen with certainity that Ian Dowling was rucked deliberately on the head and are crying blue murder about it. Equally amazing is that on the same site, no-one seems to have seen the stamping incident that lead to Alan Quinlan’s ban and indeed, they are full of mitigation for it. Odd.

Oh, and they can keep their eyes of Rob Kearney as well. Even if he spends the next season or two on the bench behind Hickie and Dempsey, he’ll still see more ball and play more rugby than if he moves to Munster. Anyway, there is not a huge amount of rugby left in those two, and Kearney is still very young, so there is no real need to move him out just yet.

Take a look at this drop goal from the young man:

Considering that the question of back up to Ronan O’Gara is still up in the air, why have there been relatively few shouts for Connachts’ Mark McHugh? Watching the Connacht - Ulster match (Connacht were badly done by a few peculiar referring decisions) he seemed as good a shout as anyone.

In the context of the debate on the future of Britain, the contribution of the Conservatives on the teaching of history is quite interesting, and are worth consideration. Essentially, they have put together a list of 12 great people who shaped the institutions of Britain, and focus on them as a means of telling the ‘British nations’ history as a unified block.

Two initials thoughts struck me. Firstly, whilst the call for the teaching of history to be used as a means of nation-building is nothing unique or innovative, it does now seems to be ever so arcane and 19th and early 20th century sounding. As their education spokesperson states:

“Britain needs to be one country - and this means that all British people must share a knowledge and understanding of the events which have made us what we are as a people.”

Is the British ‘nation’ now so weak, that one of the first means to building such an national identification needs to be regenerated?

The main thing which struck me was the inclusion of Columba, a most interesting choice, given that he was very much a figure from the Irish Sea world. I would never have thought of him in a ‘British’ context, but rather in the context of Hibernian dominance in the horrifically entitled ‘Celtic fringe’. Whilst the rest of the medieval figures, the likes of Simon de Montfort are very much from the traditional school of great Britons i.e. English , Columba isn’t, and the attempt to integerate him into a British ‘national’ history is imaginative, but hugely flawed from a historical perspective.

I hope to give Columba a bit more consideration of the coming days, as well as creating a comparable list of Irish figures. There is much to ponder in this, not least the idea of a return to teaching the history of ‘great men’ and institutions something which has become increasingly unpopular over the past half-century or so.

Edit: I’ve thrown a thread on this up on politics.ie.

Courtesy, I think, of one of the good people of UCC YFG.

The Christmas edition of the Informer, Young Fine Gael’s magazine is now available.

There is an instructive segment within the Moriarty tribunal’s report comparing the treatment of Haughey at the hands of AIB, and Garrett Fitzgerald. It is a short segment at page 48, and is quite interesting, confirming the integerity and honesty of Fitzgerald. Given the preference of many Fianna Fail people to paint all politicans as crooks, rather than address corruption within their own party, such comparisions are useful.

As already mentioned the case of Dr. Garrett Fitzgerald afforded a further opportunity to compare the Bank’s handling of Mr. Haughey’s case with a case of substantial borrowings involving a prominent public figure. Dr. Garrett Fitzgerald’s case concerned an investment he took up in the late 1980s. On ceasing to hold the positions of Taoiseach and leader of Fine Gael in 1987, Dr. Fitzgerald accepted an invitation to become a member of the Board of Guinness Peat Aviation. Certain share purchase entitlements were reserved to employees and directors of that company: partially on foot of that entitlement, and also to address other financial requirements, Dr. Fitzgerald obtained in April, 1988, a loan facility of $322,000.00 from Allied Irish Banks, his existing bankers, through its retail section. That sum
incorporated an amount of $125,000.00 for the purchase of Guinness Peat Aviation shares and the loan was provided on a normal full recourse basis, meaning that the Bank was entitled to claim for both interest and principal against all of Dr. Fitzgerald’s assets.

Then in August, 1989, Dr. Fitzgerald entered into a further loan arrangement with Allied Irish Banks, but in this instance with its Capital Markets subsidiary. Here, as with similar arrangements negotiated by other employees and directors of Guinness Peat Aviation, the loans involved recourse to the borrowers for interest, but as regards the capital amount of
the loan, the recourse was limited to the actual company shares. The amount borrowed on foot of this scheme was $188,000.00, and of this sum, $82,000.00 was applied in part repayment of the 1988 loan, with the balance being used to purchase further Guinness Peat Aviation shares.

In 1992, Dr. Fitzgerald requested that both the preceding loans be amalgamated into one facility with the retail banking section of Allied Irish Banks. By that time, in addition to servicing interest, significant reductions on capital had been made by Dr. Fitzgerald in relation to both loans. Accordingly, both loans were refinanced by a new loan of $248,000.00, the entirety of which was on a normal full recourse basis. This was notwithstanding the non-recourse element in the preceding loan with the Capital Markets arm of Allied Irish Banks, and in this regard, Dr. Fitzgerald candidly acknowledged in evidence that he had omitted to ‘‘read the small print’’, although it was not suggested that the Bank had acted in any underhand or sharp fashion in this regard.

In 1993, what had been expected to be a successful and profitable flotation of Guinness Peat Aviation transpired to be a debacle, the share price collapsed, and Dr. Fitzgerald was left facing an indebtedness with full recourse in the entire amount of the refinanced loan for $248,000.00.
Certain securities in relation to assignment of life assurance, a guarantee from Dr. Fitzgerald’s wife and the share certificates had also been taken by the Bank.

Although Dr. Fitzgerald continued to enjoy an income from writing, lecturing and consultancy work, he had considerable outgoings, particularly in relation to his wife’s declining health, and he was, in terms of the debt he faced, not a wealthy man. The sole asset of substance was the
mortgaged family home at Palmerston Road, Dublin 6; an agreement was entered into with his son, Mr. Mark Fitzgerald, whereby the latter sold his nearby family home, and purchased the Palmerston Road premises, with a view to converting it into accommodation for both families.

An independent valuation had assessed the price with vacant possession at £200,000.00,
but discounted to £150,000.00 if Dr. Fitzgerald and his wife took up residence in an upstairs flat. That sum was paid to Dr. Fitzgerald, but by the time he had discharged the mortgage, contributed to the re-conversion works and paid certain other liabilities, he was left with a residue of only approximately £30,000.00. To advise him on his situation, he engaged an
Accountant and also a retired Senior Bank Executive, Mr. Patrick Dowling. Although the latter had held a senior position in Allied Irish Banks prior to retirement, he was not acquainted with Dr. Fitzgerald and the introduction was made by Mr. Mark Fitzgerald.

In evidence, Mr. Dowling stated that in discussion Dr. Fitzgerald had initially been hopeful of discharging his indebtedness in full through income, but Mr. Dowling had had to dash those hopes as unrealistic, and was given reluctant permission to approach the Bank with a view to
settlement. He dealt with Mr. Thomas Barry, Chief Manager of Allied Irish Banks Capital Markets, making full disclosure of Dr. Fitzgerald’s position and placing some reliance on the significantly more advantageous positions of the preponderance of Guinness Peat Aviation employees and directors who had dealt only with the Capital Markets arm, and arguing that
it was at least debatable that repayment to the Bank might be wholly or partly limited to the proceeds of the shares. He offered the £30,000.00 in settlement of the debt, in response to which the Bank concluded that a cash settlement was preferable to expending such limited assets as were available on legal costs, but sought an increase to a sum of £40,000.00. This was accepted, paid and, other than realising the very limited value of the shares pledged, the remaining securities released. Regarding the course taken by Mr. Mark Fitzgerald and his wife in ease of Dr. Fitzgerald, Mr. Dowling stated that he viewed it as one of the great acts of selfless
family solidarity that he had experienced. Some other marginal matters arose briefly in evidence, such as the fact that Dr. Fitzgerald’s borrowings were by no means entirely related to intended share purchases, and that if the Bank had delayed in selling the shares, they might have availed of a partial recovery in their value, but in real terms, having converted the
£40,000.00 to its equivalent of $56,000.00, the settlement accepted constituted approximately 22% of the total outstanding.

In summary it would appear that in compromising his indebtedness with the Bank, Dr. Fitzgerald disposed of his only substantial asset, namely, his family home at Palmerston Road, a property which would now be worth a considerable sum of money. As in Mr. Haughey’s case, there was a substantial discounting or forbearance shown in Dr. Fitzgerald’s case. However in contrast with Mr. Haughey’s case, Dr. Fitzgerald’s case involved the effective exhaustion of his assets in order to achieve a settlement whereas Mr. Haughey’s assets were retained virtually intact.

The machinations of Irish politicians in Europe rarely get the coverage they might if they were done more locally. Today’s Irish Times carries a relatively brief report entitled ‘Ahern may switch to Liberals’ (page 13). Unfortunately, it doesn’t go into much details surrounding the context and recent history of FF, the UEN and the Liberals.

As has been discussed previously here (see links below), this is the latest in a series of efforts by Fianna Fáil (FF) leadership to relocate within the European Parliament. Currently, they are associated with the UEN political group, which is dominated by right-wing, reactionary conservative group within the parliament with relatively little influence. In Bertie Ahern’s own words, it is ‘a mishmash group’. This has become a concern for FF in recent year, with a number of abortive efforts over the past three years to engineer a relocation to the Liberal grouping (ALDE – whose main constituent are the European Liberals, the ELDR).

So, why the Liberals? After all one one would naturally question how FF can be categorised as a Liberal party, considering, well, that they are not exactly liberals. Firstly it is the best options available, with the Socialist (PES) and the European Peoples’ Party (EEP-ED) groupings already having Irish members in Labour and Fine Gael, both of those more ‘natural’ fits are not real options, so bar remaining with the UEN, the only real choice is the Liberals. This would mean that FF would be part of a more powerful group in the European Parliament, and would also mean that they would have institutional links with mainstream political parties across the Union.

But there are problems with all of this. First off, the MEPs seem to like the UEN. They are big fish in a small pond, with Brian Crowley being a president of the grouping, and they are extremely unlikely to have the same status and importance in the Liberal grouping. Secondly, there is the problems of politics, with FF’s MEPs having much more conservative views on issues such as abortion than the Liberal group adopts. Certainly, their will be plenty of scope for Dana Rosemary Scanlon types to attack FF over this.

However, it would appear that the leadership with the Liberal grouping, are in favour of such membership. This was exposed quite clearly during the past year, when Ógra Fianna Fáil made a ham-fisted effort to integrate themselves further with the youth wing of the ELDR, LYMEC. Despite having the support of Pat Cox, Graham Watson and others leading figures in the Liberal grouping, as well as the leadership of LYMEC itself, the Young Progressive Democrats successfully blocked any moves for Ógra to membership and involvement in LYMEC (in what seemed to be a very bitter spat). And that leads to another question. Whilst the PDs don’t have any members of the European Parliament, they are involved in the ELDR and it would be interesting to see what their view on this would be.

This is power politics at it most obvious. Few would argue that FF are liberals, indeed the Young PDs made a presentation to LYMEC as to why they were not, and LYMEC agreed with this assessment. But it works for both the Liberals and FF. For FF it is a more palatable home (although there will be a lot of talk about abortion and other similar issues if this goes far), and for the Liberals it means they get a political party with a Prime Minister and improves their own prestige as well.

So things could prove interesting. Unfortunately, with the exception of a few pieces back in 2004 in the SBP, this is something which has largely been ignored by the media in this state. Indeed, the story of Ógra’s failed attempt to get into LYMEC was only covered by the Phoenix which was strange given the factors surrounding it i.e. that it was an attempted serious step towards membership of the Liberal grouping in the parliament, the high level support that the Ógra move had , that the move was most likely in opposition to the viewpoint of the MEPs and the open warfare that developed between the youth groups of the two government parties would all.

See also:
Fianna Fáil’s European Difficulties
Fianna Fáil’s European Difficulties - Phoenix Coverage
UEN given a stay of execution
YPDs and Fianna Fáil another update

In case your regular reading does not take you to the North Korean press agency, KCNA, they had one of their regular gems attacking the USA:

Pyongyang, December 8 (KCNA) — U.S. President Bush at a recent radio address blustered that he would win in the fight with the enemies though he had been defeated in the mid-term election. Describing this as the last-ditch fit of those facing political bankruptcy, Rodong Sinmun says Friday: Recalling that the Bush forces openly launched a robber-like war of aggression to put anti-imperialist independent countries and strategic vantages under their control under the slogan of “combating terrorism” and “establishing a democratic order” following the “September 11 incident”, the author of the article says:
The U.S. imperialists are sustaining a serious defeat militarily.
They looked very much as if they would gobble up the world at one gulp when striking at Iraq in the wake of the Afghan war. But they are finding themselves in a tougher spot. They have suffered irretrievable losses in Iraq.
In Afghanistan, too, the situation is taking a sharp downward turn.
The Bush forces are on their last legs in the political aspect also.
The results of the recent mid-term election in the U.S. dealt a serious political blow to the ruling Republican Party forces.
The “war on terrorism” going on several years has ended the U.S. economy up in woeful straights.
The United States is shunned even by its allies.
The U.S. imperialists have suffered a debacle in the moral aspect, too, under the eyes of the world.
The whole processes of the U.S. imperialists’ aggression and military occupation and rule over Afghanistan and Iraq have stripped them naked before the world as the world’s biggest monsters and chief man-slaughters.
The U.S. bellicose forces’ propaganda barrage about “victory” in the brigandish “war on terrorism” against anti-imperialist independent countries is no more than a foolish gimmick to quell at whatever cost the anti-Bush and anti-war sentiments growing among the Americans opposed to their aggressive and unpopular policy and prolong their political days which are numbered. It also reveals their scheme to expand the criminal “war on terrorism”.
Only a pitfall of destruction awaits the U.S. warhawks brandishing the stick of strong arm.

Why couldn’t the Irish Times or RTE be more like this?

The Taskforce on Active Citizenship have completed and published their Report on Active Citizenship Consultation Process. Having just skimmed through it, there seem to be some interesting recommendations, particularly in the areas of political and youth participation. Young Fine Gael made a submission to the Taskforce on those two areas, and it would seem that some of our ideas were taken on board.

There would appear to have been a huge interest in this process with over 1,000 submissions to the Taskforce. Hopefully, they will follow the Forum on Europe’s process and make those submissions available online.

The brilliance of this country’s traffic management was shown this morning on the M50. A crash on the M50 at the point of the N4 caused major delays heading south and added more than an hour and a half to my father’s journey from Ratoath to Tallaght. The really excellent thing though was that whilst no Gardaí were in evidence in moving the traffic follow on above the crash, they were out in force speed trapping just after the accident.

Truly it is a great country we live in.

Edit 1: Joan Burton TD has some more on this.

Courtesy of Mulley’s list of Irish political blogs, my online reading has been expanded. Thanks for that.

One new blog that I’ve come across in the past few days, Viammaniunto is another good read, with an interesting breadth of topic. In particular, I liked the contribution on the immigration and integeration debate. Unless there is some serious cogging going on, I presume Viammaniunto and Respvblica over on politics.ie are one and the same.

Haven’t a clue what it means though.

They are debating the merits of education league tables on Questions and Answers tonight, and it is the usual hackneyed arguments once more. A cousin of mine, Colm, always made the point that if schools don’t want the world to know about their examination results, then they shouldn’t put out stories every year about how well some of their students did. We’re all used to our local papers publishing stories from school about how many A1s they got, how many people got 600 points and so on. Surely if that is worthy of public attention, so too is the failure rate, the drop-rate and so on?

Unfortunately, due to a holiday booked well in advance, I wasn’t present when on Friday Ashbourne Rugby played their first match under flood-lights. And there was a match worthy of the occasion with Ashbourne’s firsts playing Roscrea in a top of the table Leinster Division Two clash. By all accounts it was a tough match, played in miserable conditions, but Ashbourne scrapped it 18-15 to go top of the league, and remain undefeated after 5 league matches. Hopefully their will be plenty more similar matches at the club which can do justice to the excellent work being put into the club in recent times.

Courtesy of Charter 97, via the Belarus Tol Blog, it seems that Lukashenka has come out and admitted that his election earlier this year was rigged:

“We have rigged the latest election. 93.5 per cent have voted for Lukashenka. But they say it is not a European measure. We have made it 86 per cent,” A. Lukashenka said. As said by him, there were promises by Europe before the elections that in case “of approximately European figures at the election, the election would be recognized”. “But it failed too. They promised to recognize the ballot, but they didn’t,” Lukashenka stated.

All very intriguing and brazen. It would be interesting to know who it was making promises in Europe?

Whilst he had a good game, and answered a few of An Spailpin’s questions, I still am not convinced about Paddy Wallace at 10. Moving a player out of position form their usual may work for centres and wingers, but at the pivot I don’t like it. Today, in decent conditions, with plenty of attacking ball, Wallace proved some value for money, and did well for his first start for Ireland.

But in a close match, I don’t trust the idea of brining someone onto replace an injured O’Gara and play a kicking game, or innovate, if they are not doing it week in, week out at their club or province. Similarily, when it comes to a pressure kick for goal, can you rely on a person who is not used to that? Those reason, and the fact I believe him to be a superior footballer, is why I’d vouch for Staunton - or at least have given him a run at some stage over the past six months. However, Eddie O’Sullivan has made his mind up (based on what, I’d like to know) and didn’t even put Staunton on the bench , so best of luck to Paddy. But, I’m not sure if I’d have the faith in him coming on for a pressure match, compared to a out-half playing that position regularly.

It is 34 years (not 24 as previously mentioned) since the people approved the fourth constitutional amendment, to extend the electoral franchise to those of 18 and over (it had previously been 21). Taking a brief skim through the Dáil and Seanad debates on the subject, it is interesting that there was a strong debate on whether the age to enter those institutions should have been similarly introduced.

As was put by Senator Boland (FG) in the Seanad debate:

There is a strange type of anomaly that while this Bill, if passed, and if the referendum is agreed to, will allow people of 18 years and over the right to vote, nonetheless one will still have to be 21 years or older to stand for election as a member of either the Dáil or the Seanad. It seems strange that the Government did not, at the same time, take the opportunity of introducing a second Amendment of the Constitution Bill which would have allowed those of 18 years and over the right to stand for election as candidates. There have been various reasons advanced as to why this should not be so. I do not consider them to be reasons with any great [410] foundation because they are mainly based on the fact that no other country happens to allow young people of 18 or over the right to stand as candidates for elections. Far too often our yardstick is whether or not a precedent exists in other countries, usually in the western hemisphere and usually countries which are our neighbours. The Government should have taken a braver approach towards this, so that perhaps if at some time in the future a similar type of discussion was being held in the national parliaments of other countries, the precedent of Ireland allowing young people of 18 years the right to stand as candidates in elections could be held up as an example for those other countries to follow. This poor little country, as always, waits until the last moment and until there is a very definite and safe precedent to go by, so that our national parliament and our Government will not be embarrassed.

I hope that in his reply the Parliamentary Secretary may give some better reasons than have been given so far as to why young people of 18 to 21 years are not being allowed to stand as candidates.

He wasn’t the only one, with Deputy TJ Fitzpatrick (FG) argued the case strongly for the same in the Dáil. The really interesting thing was not that the logical step of allowing people to enter the institution which they were voting for, but rather the weak nature of those who argued against it.

I searched in vain in for a credible argument against this, beyond the arguments relating to maturity. Indeed, the Junior Minister Andrews (FF) who introduced the bill to the Dáil had this to say:

I would urge him to take the view that we should go to the country on a single issue and that issue should not be confused with other matters of the nature he suggested. I agree that there is a certain anomaly in the concept of votes at 18 and young people not being entitled to seek election at that age.

34 years on, surely it is time to change that anomaly? And to this author, early next year, and in conjunction with the children’s rights referendum offers an excellent opportunity.

“There are genuine concerns about crime in Meath and across the country - the least voters should expect is a coherent policy approach to tackling it”

So says Fianna Fáil’s Meath East candidate Thomas Byrne.

Surely it would make sense that such sentiments (made in a piece on gun crime) would be expressed towards the current government, considering the year of gun crime that we’ve had and or continuing to experience? And if Thomas or Fianna Fáil has a ‘coherent policy’ towards gun crime, surely they might let the government and their Minister of Justice know about it. Because it is fairly obvious that the current government does not have one.

In 2001, when I finished secondary school in Ashbourne, I wasn’t aware of a ‘non-national’ presence within the school. That is not to say that there were not some students of foreign origins within the school, but they were indistinguishable from the school population at large. They were of small number, spoke English, and were integrated within the school population.

Five years on, anecdotal evidence would suggest that the many of the secondary schools in the greater Dublin area have now developed such a ‘non-national’ presence - within the inner city areas this presence is fragmented fragmented amongst a variety of nationalities, but in the suburban area this presence is primarily of Eastern European origins. In the main, these Eastern European students are recent arrivals to the state, and entering second level education, will quite naturally congregate with those of similar backgrounds. Sharing one of two common languages, and having sufficient numbers, these students are able to become a self-sustaining and frequently isolated group or clique within the school.

Now, the presence of increasing numbers of non-nationals within the education system is undoubtedly causing strain within the system, from a variety of view points - primarily that of language skills and the resourcing required to bring the new students up to the level of English necessary to get a full education here. But that is not my main interest in this post today, but rather it is the question of integration. The ghettoisation of students is just an aspect of a broader question facing the state today - whilst we are apparently happy to welcome large numbers of immigrants (primarily of Eastern European to this state to work, how do we plan on them living within this state?

In this regard, we have been ill served by our political class - our media commentators, our opinion-formers, politicians and civil society leaders have all failed to express a real vision on this issue, instead resorting to the inane platitudes about diversity, multiculturalism and other vacuous Blairite nonsense when vocalising on the subject. More generally, when not resorting to these tired clichés, we are sold the story that immigration is all good, providing a huge boost to the Irish economy. And that certainly is true, but we are being failed by our leaders as they adopt the same attitude of our continental brothers and sisters one, two or three generation ago, and fail to think of immigrants as anything other than economic inputs. We need to move beyond such myopic thinking, and learn the lessons of the French riots, of the London bombings, or the sporadic ‘boom and bust’ growth in xenophobic political parties in places like Belgium, Austria, France and the Netherlands. We need to learn the lessons of our own diaspora as they emigrated to largely homogeneous states.

Today’s Irish Times carries an article under the title ‘Immigration has been all gain for the State’ by Garrett FitzGerald, which unfortunately seeks to reassure the reader that immigration to this state is all-good and that it presents Irish society with no problems. Basing his argument on statistics from the Quarterly National Household Survey, Garrett argues that the number of immigrants (from the 10 accession states which is the main source of the influx of immigrants inwards to this state) within this state is radically over-estimated, that there are ‘just 69,000′ of them working in this state, they move on quickly and that only 13% of them are dependants (unemployed, children, elderly, etc.), all of which means that “from our point of view these new member state immigrants are almost all pure gain”. Which is true economically and today.

But it largely misses the stage where the debate about immigration should be at this stage, within our state (and I wonder if the census will confirm it, as it seems spectacularly at odds with the experience of daily life). Irrespective of whether we have the most of 100,000 or 200,000 immigrants it is inevitable, that as long as this country is relatively prosperous, we will attract immigrants here to work and live, and if the immigrant population is not at those levels today, it will be at those levels in future years - and they will be in such numbers as to generate their own sustainable communities. As a society, we have failed to recognise this and continue to believe that this is a temporary, economic issue, one which is small, confined, and does not touch on society at large. Far too many people take the view that these immigrants are here for a short number of years, and then will return home, a scenario which will be true of some, maybe a majority, but certainly not all or nearly all of our immigrants. Many will settle here, live here, bring up families here, and die here. Our challenge is to include those people as much as possible in Irish society, so that they are full stake-holders in Irish society, and represent no substantial challenge to the common weal.

And for this to occur, we need to have a commonly accepted and clearly understood system in place for brining new comers into Irish society. Currently, as any tour of the suburban towns on the M50 belt will tell, our main immigrant communities are reacting as expected, living in communities which are largely insular, self-contained and lacking regular interaction with Irish society at large. A situation which Irish society is currently happy to accept. We want our shops and pubs staffed, workplaces cleaned and so on, but are unwilling to treat those workers as our equals in society, leaving them to their own devices after hours, and us to our as well.

Such a situation is unsustainable, unjust and myopic. If only a portion of these people are to stay, they must fully engage with society as a whole. For society as a whole, as with the secondary school, it is important that the cliques are reduced as much as possible. The value in this is obvious, if society as a whole is unwilling to integrate immigrants fully, and there is a ready made community for immigrants to be absorbed into amongst other immigrants, then naturally barriers will continue to be created. The credo of multiculturalism is one that will solidify those barriers by continuing to encourage people to emphasis their differences. While this may work successfully in a fluid, historically multi-ethnic society, I have yet to see evidence to suggest that it works in an overwhelmingly homogeneous state as our own.

We, as a society, must recognise that we will have large communities of immigrants in this state, that many will stay, and that there is relatively little (in the context of the EU, or for that matter anyhow) that we can do to ’stem this tide’. We must rather focus on manufacturing a nation into which we can co-opt these immigrants as equal partners, who can settle, work and live here in harmony with the rest of the state. The means for doing this will present us with challenges, but how we manufacture such a consent is the question.

It is with that in mind, it is a pity that one of the few figures with the ability to look at the subject with a long-term and social just view, in Garrett FitzGerald has not turned his attention to the subject. Indeed, in the absence of such figures providing leadership, we continue to allow the possibility that such leadership will be taken by negative, nihilistic and populist forces. I would like to see competing visions as to how this could be done, to be put before the electorate, but given the general hand washing of the issue I doubt it will happen. However, it should be taken as a serious issue by the incoming government, and I would like to see a National Forum on Europe effort put in, to co-opt society at large into creating a frame-work for integration of new immigrants. Such an effort would focus on allowing members of the public to have a say in such a frame-work through regional meetings, whilst having political parties provide the impetus behind it.

But for something like that to occur, would mean that the politicians of this state we committed to something vaguely long-term, and to put one’s hope in that is an obviously misguided effort. In ten, twenty or thirty years time, we like our French, Dutch, Austrian or Belgian counterparts will have our own immigrant problem, because we didn’t bother to learn their lessons, and decided to adopt our usual myopic viewpoint.

***Garrett FitzGerald’s article is available in the comment section of today’ Irish Times (25/11/2006). I don’t have a subscription to ireland.com, so forgive the absence of a link.

Trinity run an interesting course for under-graduates called ‘Citizens, Politics and Decisions’ which is open to students of all faculities. The course covers a wide variety of aspects relating to politics, and is graded on ‘opinion stlye’ pieces which the students write, the output of which is an available online in a magazine called The Thunderer. Well worth a look.

The 7th of December marks the 24th anniversary of the acceptance by the Irish people of the 4th Constitutional Amendment, which reduced the voting age from 21 to 18. Hopefully, it won’t be too long before we’ve the chance to reduce the age for entry to the Dáil to 18 as well. After all, if your old enough to make the decision on who should be allowed into the Dáil, then surely you should be allowed in as well. As has been covered elsewhere before, this is something that Fergus O’Dowd and FG are supporting, so hopefully a bit of pressure will come through on it. Indeed, it would be an idea to have this issue put to the people the same day as the children’s rights question will also be put, early next year.

A thread on politics.ie on the national anthem has got me thinking about it again. Earlier this year, when the debate on the purchasing of the original text by the state was raised, I meant to do a bit of research on its history. Not really the history of the song itself, but rather its status - its official nature, whether it was governed by legislation , what are the ‘correct words’, how can it be changed and so on.

However, other endeavours got in the way, and it was only yesterday that my thoughts returned to it. A bit of research through the Oireachtas online archive, as well as the statue-books have thrown up some interesting things. I had expected to find some specific legislation governing the anthem, its words and so on (indeed, I had mistakenly presumed it would be in the constitution, as the flag is), but the only reference to it that I was able to come across was a mention to the purchase of its copyright in the 1934 Appropriation Act.

The Oireachtas archive proved a better feeding ground. The vote on the Appropriation Act above in 1933 proved instructive. According to the then Minister of Finance, McEntee:

That a sum not exceeding £1,200 be granted to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending 31st March, 1934, for the Acquisition by the State of Copyright in the National Anthem.

This Estimate is introduced to give effect to an agreed settlement to copyright proceedings initiated in respect to the performance in theatres and elsewhere of the National Anthem, that is to say, the “Soldier’s Song.” As some Deputies may not be aware of the position in regard to the Anthem, I may say that the music of the “Soldier’s Song” was informally adopted by the then Government as the National Anthem for use within the State in May, 1924. On 12th July, 1926, the Executive Council formally ruled that the “Soldier’s Song” should be used as the National Anthem of An Saorstát for all purposes at home and abroad.

This was actually quite an interesting debate, with fairly robust exchanges on the subject - indeed it was described by one Deputy as a ‘a jaunty little piece of vulgarity’ and heated views on both sides. Whilst the issue of the anthem has frequently been raised, before and after, this was the only really serious debate on the subject that I could find, and in the context of the state we are in, I would refer readers to one particular extract from a Deputy Fitzgerald-Kenny;

It seems to me that while we are here a sovereign assembly there are certain things which no sovereign assembly can do. One of them is to order the people of the country what songs they are going to sing. I think you will find that persons who wish to sing will sing songs of their own choice, and not the songs which are laid down by any legislation of this House. In consequence, I believe that if you did, here in this House, elect that there should be some other song, or some other air chosen as a national anthem, it simply would not work. You might on State occasions have your bands playing, by order, that particular air, but it would not be in reality the national anthem, because the national anthem is, and must be in its nature, the song which the people of the country regard as their national anthem. As has already been pointed out, national anthems are not written to order. Nowhere have they been written to order or adopted by Governments in the first instance. They have always come naturally and spontaneously. Take for instance the “Watch on the Rhine” or the “Marseillaise”; the former has come from a certain time in the history of Germany, and the latter from a certain period in French history. The people of the country concerned adopted them. The “Marseillaise” was put in the background in France for a period, but came out again because it was the wish of the French people that it should be their national anthem. Even if it were desirable, I think it would be utterly impossible to change the views of the majority of the people of this State as to what ought to be the national anthem. I am perfectly satisfied that “The Soldier’s Song”; is going to continue to be the national anthem, and that even if we wished to change it—which I personally do not think desirable—we could not do it.

Indeed. But just as with the constitution, is this the anthem of the people today? And is it the anthem of a united Ireland?

But back to the question of the anthem itself. The Dáil record would seem to suggest that the anthem is the ‘Soldiers Song’, at least at first. There was frequent references to it as such, and in comparison in the early debates there is no mention made of its Irish title. Indeed, it would appear that the English version of it is the ‘official one’, or at least the one that is set in stone. This is the clear implication of a recent member’s question put to Brian Cowen;

I am satisfied that the current version of the national anthem is the appropriate and correct interpretation of the words as composed by Peadar Kearney.

This was also the implication to an apparently comical exchange in the Dáil in 1926, when the Minsiter of Defence responded that it was the ‘Soldier’s Song’ which was the anthem.

This would fly in the face of the general conventional wisdom, and one that I would have shared which was that there was an official version and it was the Irish one. This view was nicely put by a poster on the previously mentioned thread, when he said

he point, surely, is that when the anthem was adopted as the official National Anthem (1926?) it was the version in Irish which became the official music and lyrics. And those lyrics don’t mention Saxons in any way.

So whether the original “Soldiers Song” actually did mention Saxons, or whether the English version commonly seen today has the bit about Saxons as a later mistranslation, is completely irrelevant.

It would seem from the various debates in the Dáil, that the state of play we have to today, is one which has evolved over time through ministerial orders, departmental regulation and the like, but not one which is set in stone. A lack of certainty of this was also to be seen in a 1995 Dáíl question to Bertie Ahern when he said

I am having the position regarding the required procedures for the commissioning and putting in place of a new anthem checked to see if any exist and I will advise the Deputy as soon as the relevant information if available.

The outcome of those deliberations is not available on the net, but they would prove interesting, as to the standing of the anthem currently. From my brief perusal of these two sources, it would appear the anthem is on fairly weak footing (or at least the version we sing - the Irish one), and is more a matter of convention, than anything having the standing that I thought it would have.

I’d be interested to find out more on this, so if people have know where I could find out more, or have that information at their fingertips, please throw it up here.

The announcement today of a referendum on the rights of children will be the 28th amendment put to the people in relation to the Irish constitution since its acceptance back in 1937. As we consider once again adding, subtracting or changing an element of the constitution, is it not time that we consider revisiting and rewriting the whole thing?

The constitution is a well-written, clear and relatively concise document. It is easy to follow, and to make sense of, but it is increasingly unreflective of the Ireland we live in today, and the state that controls it. If we start at the beginning, with the pre-amble we get a flavour of a society that has largely passed.

In the Name of the Most Holy Trinity, from Whom is all authority and to Whom, as our final end, all actions both of men and States must be referred,
We, the people of Éire,
Humbly acknowledging all our obligations to our Divine Lord, Jesus Christ, Who sustained our fathers through centuries of trial,
Gratefully remembering their heroic and unremitting struggle to regain the rightful independence of our Nation,
And seeking to promote the common good, with due observance of Prudence, Justice and Charity, so that the dignity and freedom of the individual may be assured, true social order attained, the unity of our country restored, and concord established with other nations,
Do hereby adopt, enact, and give to ourselves this Constitution.

Whilst not attracting any real force, the pre-amble clearly defines Ireland as a Christian, Catholic and nationalist state. Whilst much of this is still true to many people today, it does not accurately reflect the basic guiding principles of this state today, and nor is it likely into the future. This tone is continued throughout the document, nowhere more so than Article 41 with its references to the women’s place within the home, the micro-management of the ability of people to get divorced and its placing of marriage on a pedestal.

In addition, the constitution reflects a state from the dying days of the nation-state; it sets out Ireland as very much a state alone. Over the years ad hoc amendments relating to various European treaties have been made, but today our membership of the EU is a fundamental aspect of our state’s existence. This should be clearly and unambiguously established within our country’s basic law. Similarly too with the United Nations, a body which we have placed at the centre of our foreign policy, but which our membership of is not protected by our constitution.

Further criticisms can be levied against the document with regard to its provisions (or lack thereof) with regard to education, economic rights, the role and nature of our houses of parliament, citizenship, bail and other justice issues as well as our relationship with Northern Ireland, unification and Great Britain. As with every further amendment, or the mooting of a referendum, the inadequacies, and antiquities of the constitution are more evident.

Our current constitution accurately reflects the Ireland of the 1930s, and 1940s. Surely modern Ireland should demand the same?

It probably won’t get much attention in the Ireland, but the political repression continues in Belarus with the imprisionment of another political activist, Zmitser Dashkevich leader of the youth politcal movement Malady Front or Young Front.

Below is a summary of the trial which I was sent from youth politicals active in the region.

Zmitser Dashkevich, the Leader of the Youth Organisation of Belarus “Young Front”, Has Been Sentenced To 1,5 Year Term of Imprisonment.

Today on November 1, 2006 Zmitser Dashkevich, the leader of the youth organisation of Belarus “Young Front”, has been sentenced to one and a half year term of imprisonment according to Article 193 of the Criminal Code of the Republic of Belarus “activity from the name of unregistered organisation”. A closed trial of the case has taken only 2 days.

Zmitser Dashkevich’s attorney Aliaksandr Halieu thinks that such a quick trial happened due to the absence of a great number of witnesses. He notes that the process of the trial has been completely carried out. The trial started on October, 31 and ended on November, 1.

The Ambassadors of the EU countries and the USA as well as several journalists have been permitted to present during the announcement of the verdict. The ambassadors agreed that Belarusian authorities more and more isolate the country by putting into prison the activists like Dashkevich.

A month before the trial Zmitser had been kept in a detention place. Previously he was also arrested several times for participation in peaceful actions of opposition and was in the detention place during the manifestations against the results of the presidential elections in March, 2006 in Minsk City.

The Article of the Criminal Code “activity from the name of unregistered organisation” had been put into force before the Presidential Elections of 2006. The observers thought it had been made with the aim to press civil activists and those, who defend human rights in Belarus.

3 members of unregistered organisation “Partnerstva” /“Partnership”/ were imprisoned according to the same Article this year. The members of the organisation had fulfilled the functions of independent Belarusian observers at the elections.

The former leader of “Young Front” Paval Seviarynets was sentenced for 2 years of hard labour for organizing the action of protest against the official results of the Referendum and Parliament’s Elections in October 2004 and in reality for active participation in civil life of the country. This summer Arthur Finkevich, “Young Front’s” activist was sentenced to 2 years of correctional labour term for writing graffiti “We want someone new!” Last month civil activist Paval Krasouski was detained as a suspected in organizing a terrorist act. His fate still is not clear. This list is far from to be complete.

The abovementioned facts are nothing but a Belarusian reality.

The Belarus Tol Blog has more details.

Courtesy of Pretty Cunning I came across these two clips of Simon Geoghegan at his peak against England.

It is amazing how much that professional players have bulked up in the past 12 years. Oh, and how class Geoghegan was.

Readers of Sunday’s newspapers may have seen the call for submissions from the public and interested organisations by the National Forum on Europe. This time around, the theme will be people’s vision for the future of Europe, fifty year’s on from the Treaty of Rome. The deadline is early in December, and it is something which myself and YFG will be looking at doing again.

Speaking of which, I have been meaning to write about by far one of the more interesting public submission to the Forum’s last year was from a Denis Murphy, but have not yet got around to it. Anyway, I would encourage people to take a look at it. It can be downloaded here - it is a word document, but for some reason was saved without an extension.

During its brief incarnation, Daily Ireland was renowned for its slavish pro-Sinn Féin line, so it was a surprise to see Máirtín Ó Muilleoir being decidedly off-message with regard to the vote on the Basque ‘Peace Process’ the other day. In the course of a particularly pathetic rant, he attacks the decision of Fine Gael MEPs to oppose the motion:

But even more interesting is the decision of FIne Gaels’s five MEPs to vote against the European Parliament motion yesterday backing the Spanish government’s decision to make peace with ETA. Flawed and all as it was, the motion garned the support of almost every thinking member of the parliament but Enda Kenny’s troops couldn’t bring themselves to back the pro-peace motion.

From reading the above, one would presume that Fine Gael were in a small minority, but this was hardly the case as the motion was only passed by 321 to 311. Obviously our publisher only credits those who share his own views with the ability to think.

But more interestingly was the fact that he was actually off-message. Sinn Féin actually abstained from the vote in the end, something which seems to have been missed in most of the press over here. So, either Martín has some issues with the Sinn Féin vote on this subject (which for some reason he doesn’t bother to go into), or more likely he wasn’t aware of the intricacies of what he was talking about.

For some reason, I got an email today advisig me of a new edition of Europe’s World, which is a journal on European affairs from some of our leading politicians.

The independent policy journal Europe’s World was launched on 4 October 2005 by over 50 leading European think tanks.

Published three times yearly, it is the only pan-European publication that offers policymakers and opinion-formers across Europe a platform for presenting ideas and forging consensus on key issues. It also reflects the diversity of national policy debates in EU states, with particular attention being paid to newcomer and candidate countries.

And from my brief skim through it, it makes for interesting reading. The first (and the would seem to be a few) that caught my attention is an article Sarkozy on European reform in the aftermath of European Consitution referenda defeats. When I’ve gone through the articles in more details, I’ll post up my views on a few of them here,

Unfortunately the transcript is not up yet, but the summary of Enda Kenny’s speech to the National Forum on Europe contains an interesting comment. Seemingly the Progressive Democrat representative (Victor Boyhan) to the Forum came out against the recent decision to place restrictions on the free movement of Romania and Bulgarian people to Ireland. According to the Forum, he;

questioned the Government’s recent decision to place restrictions on workers from Romania and Bulgaria after they become EU citizens next year. “At a time when we are protesting in America about work quotas, let us welcome people from Romania and Bulgaria.”

Fair enough, and I would agree.

But, this was a decision made at the start of the week by the government, of which the PDs are members of. And within the week we have PD representatives publicly coming out against the government decision. It seems a tad strange to me.

Thomas Byrne, erstwhile Fianna Fáil’s second candidate in Meath East, made a brief comment about Denis O’Brien’s purchase of a holding in Aer Lingus. Now, rather than refer to O’Brien as say, Esat founder, or multi-millionaire, or tax-exile, or anything else, Thomas Byrne defines him as “former Fine Gael donor Denis O’Brien”. Apparently with Mr. Byrne eaten bread is soon forgotten, as Denis O’Brien hasn’t been exactly wavering in his support for Fianna Fáil either, giving £50,000 to Fianna Fáil and the PDs in 2001, as well as the same to Fine Gael.

This weekend sees the latest instalment of the Forum on Europe’s Youth Fora this time in Limerick , following on from similiar events in Dublin, Cork and Sligo over the past year. At the Sligo event, I had the privilege of representing Fine Gael on the Forum, which is made which is made up of representatives from the main political parties, and civil society organisations.

The way in which the Sligo event worked was that the delegates broke into a number of different groups to discuss a variety of Europe related topics during the morning and then rapourteurs presented to the Forum on the views from the various groups. The main thing which struck me at the event, was the meaning of the word neutrality. When I first became involved in politics, I had very much the view that when people spoke of neutrality, they meant neutrality, or at least something which would equate to being unaligned.

This weekend sees the latest instalment of the Forum on Europe’s Youth Fora this time in Limerick , following on from similar events in Dublin, Cork and Sligo over the past year. These events are for those 16 and over, and get a good mix of final year secondary school and college students. At the Sligo event, I had the privilege of representing Fine Gael on the Forum, which is made which is made up of representatives from the main political parties, and civil society organisations.

The way in which the Sligo event worked was that the delegates broke into a number of different groups to discuss a variety of Europe related topics during the morning and then rapourteurs presented to the Forum on the views from the various groups, to which members of the Forum would sit in on to listen. The main thing which struck me at the event, was the meaning of the word neutrality. When I first became involved in politics, I had very much the view that when people spoke of neutrality, they meant neutrality, or at least something which would equate to being unaligned.

However, a number of things have caused me to re-evaluate, and to believe that neutrality in Irish public discourse, means something akin to military sovereignty. Not so much that people are against participation in forms of common defence, but that they are afraid - quite reasonably - of decision making over our armed forces being taken away from this state. This was very much the feeling from the various people at the Youth Forum, people were against signing away our military independence, but were willing to discuss various Irish involvement in European common defence.

Indeed, the delegates that I listened to were quite supportive of the idea of Ireland assuming a positive role within European defence systems, but in their discourse had no difficulty in mentioning that in the same breath as the importance of neutrality.

A Green Party councillor, Brian Meaney made a valid point during the discussions, when he said:

Very quickly. I think the issue is no﷓one knows what neutrality is. Is it a policy, is it a pronciple, is it a concept or a myth? There are many international definitions and I think the one that rings to me is neutrality is a policy conducted by a country who claim to conduct such a policy. We need the debate but I am afraid the political establishment is running away from the debate and the debate needs to happen sooner rather than later.

I’d very much agree, but for a worthwhile debate to occur, we need clarity on the words we use, and my experience is that neutrality means something very different in the sense used politically, and by the larger public. Credit must go to the likes of PANA for skewing the debate, so that conceptions of neutrality involve conscription, Somme like battlefields and unwanted wars. However, if such a debate is to occur the word neutrality needs to be taken out of the game.

Transcripts of the Forum meetings are available from their website. The full transcript of the plenary session at the end of the Youth Forum in Sligo, to which I refer above is available here. There is nothing like a transcript to show the flaws in your own spoken word.

The latest edition of Young Fine Gael’s ezine, the Informer is available here. Always worth a read, and credit to the editor, John Kennedy.

Today’s Irish Times (I’ve no online subscription, so no direct link) carries a frankly incredible report, that due to an ‘administrative error’ 742 recent graduates were not added to this years Seanad Electoral register for Dublin University. This is an utter disgrace, and since there were only about 2,000 graduates to be added to the register this year (they overlooked more than a 1/3 of those they were to add) speaks more of a ‘f*7k up’ than a ‘mix-up’ as the title of the piece puts it. I think I’m on the register as I’ve got correspondence from wannabe Seanators seeking my vote, but since the register has not been published maybe that means nothing. If I’m not on it, I will not be a very happy bunny. This whole affair does not reflect well on the Alumni office and while there is a possible out spoken of in the article, it appears that the powers the Minister has in this area, they are not willing to use.

I wonder if the college has written to those people that they have failed to include, and given the incompetence demonstrated by the college in this case, it adds ammunition to those who want rid of the TCD Seanad panel.

Given the presence on it of the infamous Ógra hack, TKWhiskers of politics.ie fame, one wouldn’t be inclined to expect too much by the way of independent thought, or reasoning from the blog Ireland - The Voice of a Nation. And one wouldn’t be dissapointed, considering their latest blog piece is an almost complete cogging of a press release from Billy Kelleher TD.

John Gormley has an interesting piece on blogging:

The fact that I could not attend highlights the real difficulty for politicians when it comes to blogging - time poverty. It just isn’t easy to grab a few moments in the day to compose your thoughts.

This is something that I think has a lot of validity to it. Politicians are under huge time pressures as it is, in particular those who are seeking election and have full-time jobs and families to look after as well. Like anything, doing something well will take time, and one has to wonder if blogging is the best use of an aspiring politicians time, campaigning wise. Potentially, yes, but in the context of the next election? I’m not so sure. My own view is that collective efforts would be better, and possibly a community blog by the various parties would be the way to go.

Another problem is that much of what is really interesting in Leinster House ie the gossip, the rumours etc are simply unprintable. A TD could write a very entertaining blog if were done anonymously.

Indeed. A return of Drapier anyone?

irishblogcon

Some people , it would seem are unable to understand the basic concepts of coalition. It is fairly simple, you take one political party which thinks one way, and put them together with others , which surprisingly think differently and you then get policies and actions based on compromise, which try to reflect the views of both parties as best as possible.

Take today’s policy announcement from Fine Gael and Labour on the A&E crisis. It clearly takes most of the ideas that Enda Kenny raised at the Ard Fheis on this subject, it combines them with Labour’s views, and then it results in a policy which reflects both political parties’ viewpoints fairly well. It shows, how on one of the most pressing issues to many voters, the two parties will work together.

Obviously, it wouldn’t reflect everything that Fine Gael say verbatim, nor will it reflect everything the Labour party think exactly, because, surprise, surprise they are not the same party. Unfortunately, rather than debate the proposals at hand, some people would prefer to play a fairly sad game of pointing out that Fine Gael and Labour don’t both have exactly the same policies. Thanks for that amazing insight.

Oh, and it is a bit ridiculous to attack someone as breaking a promise on the grounds that one of the means highlighted in Enda Kenny’s speech to achieve that promise is not contained in the policy document, and not focus on the actual promise itself. To solve the A&E crisis, which this document presents a very clear vision of how to go about doing.

A few weeks back, concern was raised about the quaility of the legisaltion being drafted, and the resourcing of those responsible for this job. It would seem that problems don’t stop there, as highlighted by Fine Gael, the much vaunted Criminal Justice Act has not yet been made availabile in print to the DDP, Solicitors or An Gardaí despite it having been passsed into law in July, and in force since the first of August.

One thing that struck me during Guido Fawkes contribution at yesterday’s political blogging conference, was that the proposed Privacy Bill offers a huge opportunity to Irish bloggers. Guido recounted how he used Pledge Bank to publish photographs of the Fake Sheik, Mazher Mahmood, despite a court injunction having been put in place. The mechanism was to have a number of different blogs to commit to publishing the same information, and by doing so, make it next to impossible to enforce the injunction.

Reflecting on the success of this strategy, Guido commented:

Guido wonders can gagging injunctions work in a world with millions of citizen publishers? Secrets are difficult to keep when one person can broadcast to the world. Interesting. Pledgebank could be very useful in the future as well.

Indeed it could, particularly over here. Whilst there is much to commend the idea of stringent protection of one’s private life from the press, it would seem that the proposed Privacy Bill, could be used quite effectively to block investigative journalism, or the publishing of information such as that, which lead to the Bertiegate storm. It has been subject to a fair amount of criticsm, and I haven’t come across much comment supporting it.

According to the NUJ:

This Bill, if implemented, would be an invitation to avoid legitimate scrutiny through injunctions. At the merest whiff of an investigation there would be a quick dash to the Four Courts to stop the investigation and to have the material gathered seized.”

And according to Andrea Martin, an expert on the law in this area:

The Bill has the potential to stifle legitimate journalistic investigation on matters of public interest.

One (well actually, I) wonders, if this presents a huge opportunity to Irish bloggers and to serve the broader public good? This bill would appear in part to offer individuals in the public eye, and opportunity to shield them from investigation. Whilst the traditional aspects of the media are obviously going to have to obey such injunctions, bloggers by following Guido’s suggestion have a way around it. All that would need to be put in place would be a mechanism whereby 15 or 20 bloggers each committed to undermining this element of the Privacy Bill by agreeing to publish information subject to injunctions, even if just the names of those involved, if it was deemed by all those involved to be in the public interest. As with Guido’s example, the numbers of those involved would be the insurance against further action.

Whilst such a mechanism my well be open to abuse, as there will be many who will legitimately seek to avail of this aspect of the Privacy Bill if implemented, a substantial group of bloggers such as outlined above would surely have the sense of what should be done and published, and what shouldn’t be. Although, I suppose who could hope that a judge would have the same vision.Unfortunately, I missed the afternoon sessions at the conference, so possibly this was raised there, but I think this is a public service that Irish political bloggers could well provide. Thoughts, particularly from anyone with a legal brain, would be most welcome.

irishblogcon

I see Dan O’Sullivan has thrown his hat in the ring for the NUI Seanad election. Best of luck.

His campaign is based around this theme:

Cutting to the chase I’m going to be seeking a nomination as a candidate for one of the NUI Seanad seats as a means to give people an opportunity to vote and in doing so highlight the fact that more than a quarter of a century after there was a referendum on it (1979) that graduates of other universities and colleges in Ireland still don’t have a vote for the Seanad. Whatever happened to one person, one vote?

Will Q&A ever stop stacking the audience?

It makes things very difficult to watch, when a fair whack of the audience are obviously partisans of some shape or another- in particular party members. Watching the current edition, it would seem that at least three were lined up FF hacks, singing from a script.

The audience should be made up of the general public as much as possible, and not partisans hacks such as myself.

The excellentReal Footy from the Australian newspaper The Age have this funny story, about how a number of fans ended up watching a final a year out of date.

PEOPLE do the strangest things, which is the only way you can explain several Age readers calling this office over the weekend to complain that they had mistakenly watched the wrong AFL grand final. How it happened is that Fox Footy, the now-defunct pay television channel, showed a preamble to the West Coast-Sydney grand final hosted by Matthew Campbell and Wayne Carey on Saturday morning. But Channel Ten, of course, had exclusive rights to the big game and at two o’clock, when those rights kicked in, Fox was required to stop its coverage and show something else. What they broadcast was the 2005 grand final, won by Sydney in a thriller over West Coast, and that’s where the confusion set in. One Age reader claimed to have watched the entire game — bear in mind that it was the same two teams — unaware that he was in fact a full year out of date. Then when something twigged just after 5pm, he flicked to Channel Ten, only to see the Eagles’ players celebrating their triumph.

Continued.

One of the aspects of Irish community life that the Taskforce on Active Citizenship is looking into is the area of political involvment, and also youth participation in voluntary work. As a result, Young Fine Gael have made this submission, focusing on getting young people politically engaged.

There is a casual assumption out there that Irish electoral participation is quite low. A recent example of this is to be found over on the Irish Election blog, where it was claimed that

According to the official government stats from the 2002 ballot, 60% of registered voters around the country actually went to the polls. The question is, though, how many were actually registered?

I’d be very surprised if more than half of those eligible to vote actually bothered.

As I have suggested before, there is a case to be made that voter participation is actually quite a deal higher based in the main on some survey work carried out by the CSO in 2002. Their quarterly house survey in the aftermath of the 2002 election, suggested that turnout could have been 72.5%, as against the turnout in official statistics of 62%.

If we take the view that the electoral register is fundamentally flawed given recent revelations, then the usage of electoral register to determine turnout must be similarly flawed. In the last election, 1,878,609 votes were cast, from a total electoral register of 3,002,173, giving the turnout figure of 62.6%. Another possible measure of voter turnout is to look at the number of citizens (Irish and UK) ordinarily resident in the state of 18 and over. According to the 2002 census, there were 3,089,775 people in this state 15 or over in the state, or whom 60,882 were 15; 61,682 were 16; and 63,039 were 17. Taking these into account leaves us with 2,904,172 18 or over. Now based on, 64.7% of people 18 and over in this state voted in the 2002 general election (this is presuming no substantial electoral fraud takes place).

However, not all residents in the state are entitled to vote, only UK and Irish citizens. So we need to take account of this, as well as those resident and those not. In total, there were 58,708 people included in the census who were non-resident, and 224,261 people who are describe as non-national. When we net the later (which includes Irish-American and so on) with the number of UK nationals, we get 120,785. Of course, this presumes that those with Irish citizenship and therefore eligible to vote, identify themselves as Irish. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to figure out how to isolate those criteria by age, but if you take a conservative view and say half of those non-Irish or UK are 18, or over, the you have about 2,814,426 eligible to vote. Which would give you a voting figure of 66.7%. Appreciating that there is a lot of its, buts and assumptions to this, and that I don’t really have the competence to interpret statistics, I think there is a fair argument to be made that voter participation is quite a bit higher than generally assumed.

Whilst that is good news generally for Irish democratic participation, it does raise concerns, as it highlights further the low participation of young people in the electoral process, something which I mean to return to in the near future.

The Forum on Europe has now lauched a message board, for people to make their views know on Neutrality and the European constitution, both in English and in Irish. All content is vetted, so it is more for statments that anything else - nothing is up there yet, but it may throw up some crackpot interesting views.

It would seem that a typing error has placed part of the new drinking driving legislation under doubt, as Gardaí apparently don’t have the authority to force someone to use a breathalyser. On a related matter John Gormley asked a related written question of An Taoiseach on Wednesday, expressing concern at the contracting of drafting work, and the use of outside contractors. An Taoiseach expressed confidence in the service, but it is interesting that the question was asked, and it would presume that some people have concerns about the quality of legislation being drafted and the people doing it.

Given the simple error of the mistake in this case, and that it was missed by the drafters and legislators, it certainly helps the case for further resources into this area, particularly in light of the relatively ambitious legislative agenda that has been announced for the coming Dáil termThis is especially important, as the Dáil and Seanad would appear to be ever increasingly ignored in the putting together of laws, which would seem to have become increasingly a function of government rather than our legislative assembly.

Quaility email doing the rounds.

An interesting aside to Bertie Ahern’s interview today, was a passing comment he made about appointments to state boards. Some of his donors lenders were subsequently appointed to state boards according to our Taoiseach, not on account of their loans to Bertie, but because they were his cronies ‘friends’ (obviously talent, ability and experience aren’t much by way of quailifcation for such cushy numbers). Is this really any less corrupt than appointing people because they have financially benefitted you?

I got my first piece of Seanad electoral material through the post last week, with a letter for Sean O’Connor seeking my vote in next years election for the Trinity Panel. His platform for election is something close to my own heart, that of reforming the electoral system, and in particular the Trinity electoral register.

A number of years ago, as part of a project in Trinity Young Fine Gael, I trawled through the Seanad Electoral register looking up the addresses of past members. Unsuprisingly, the register was hugely inaccurate, with only a small portion of voters having vaguely accurate addresses. This view was confirmed again with, when I was comparing the Trinity register and the Pembroke Ward register in Dublin South East for Lucinda Creighton. Again, few of the addresses corresponded. This, admitedly is not a scientific example, and certainly the Pembroke ward (as with others in Dublin city centre) are liable to be most inaccurate with regard to correctly recording the addresses of former Trinity students, but certainly huge problems do exist with the register, and if even half the names and addresses on the register are accurate, then I would be greatly suprised. Further to that, actually inspecting the register is extremely difficult to do in Trinity College (or at least was a few years ago, being jealously guarded by the Alumni department, and not on open display as would seem to be a requirement under the law).

Therefore, it is pleasing that someone is making an issue of this, and it does in my mind call into doubt previous elections held for the Trinity panel, and for that mater the other NUI panel. In the Trinity elections where there was a quota of about three and a half thousand out last time, electoral fraud would go a long way, and with so many votes going to invalid addresses it would not strike me as the most difficult thing in the world for people to fiddle. Of course, the class of person that Trinity attracts would never even dream of such tom foolery.

Back at the Young Fine Gael National Conference in February, I floated the idea of YFG running candidates for the NUI and Trinity panels. Admitedly the idea didn’t seem to float too many boats at conference, but it is something which I do believe still merits examination. Young Fine Gael has always suffered a problem in keeping members involved in politics after they leave college, with many people not making the leap to senior party invovlemt. A campaign, specifically aimed at targetting the thousands of former YFG members out there in both the NUI and Trinity panels, would be an opportunity to get those people back involved into the Fine Gael family.

Generally, when mention is made of party politicals runing for the university seanad seats, the idea that they should be non-party political is raised. Whilst there is a certain logic to this, I don’t see it as compelling. Young Fine Gael, running its own candidates and with a specific manifesto based around YFG’s aims and aspirations would be a useful complement to the Seanad electoral race, and present an opportunity for a rarely heard voice to be represented in that body. A young person, answerable to a youth political organisation is something that is certainly present a unique dynamic to the Irish poltical system. With regards to whether they would be members of the FG parliamentary party, I am unsure, but would probably argue against it, believing that they’re value would be largely in being accountable to YFG first, and secondly to the parliamentary party.

Whilst it would be foolhardy to believe that such a campaign would bring great results, I do think it is an opportunity for YFG to get in touch with past members, and to give our own agenda prominence, hopefully after a successful FG election. Now, more general Seanad reform, and the rights and wrongs of the University seats are a debate for another day.

Last year, there was an unmerciful amount of whinging about how mean and rough the Australians were to the poor Irish lads in the International Rules Series, in particular from the GAA itself. Since that was the case, what the hell are they doing advertising (as seen on TV ten minutes ago) the upcoming series as ‘It’s time to play - HARD’?

Currently there is an ad from the European Commission and some other crowd (Bi-Agri Aware) on RTE with the message ‘CAP benefits all of us!’ in the style of ‘What have the Romans ever done for us?’. Surely this in breach of the 1988 Radio and Television Act which states:

(3) No advertisement shall be broadcast which is directed towards any religious or political end or which has any relation to an industrial dispute.

Whilst I am aware that an earlier tranche of European funded ads telling us about great benefits brought in from Europe was believed not to be in breach of such rules, surely an ad with such an overtly partisan line on a contentious political issue is? I think so, and will soon be making a complaint to the Broadcasting Commission, and would encourages others to do so as well.

CAP is an issue that deserves an open debate across Europe, and particularly in countries like Ireland. This kind of political advertisement does neither that debate, or Europe any good.

The forthcoming presidential election in France promises to be incredibly interesting, primarily on account of Nicolas Sarkozy. Like him or loathe, almost uniquely amongst Europe’s political elite he is something. Looking at our own election, there is very much a fear on all sides in rocking the boat too much, for fear of upsetting elements of the population. Sarkozy stands in marked contrast to that, he is as likely to lambaste, and challenge his support base and floating voters, as he is to pander to them. That he is successful in this so far, is something that should interest those with any interest in politics.

With that in mind, the coverage the Irish Times is offering is most unfortunate. Lara Marlowe is an excellent columnist who gives an often-brilliant insight into subjects close to her heart, namely the Lebanon and France. Unfortunately, she is a partisan and rarely does she seem to want to or be able to hide it. In a columnist or an essayist that is to be enjoyed, however when it comes to reporting it makes her a deeply difficult witness to events. In particular, her sneering tone with regard to Sarkozy is most disappointing and it makes it difficult to use the Irish Times as a reliable source of information on this most interesting of characters.

I don’t have a subscription to the Irish Times’ web service, but having her last report to hand (September 14th - ‘Sarkozy talks the talk while Royal stumbles over words’) , her partisan nature is fairly clear. The piece opens with the mocking of Sarkozy’s aides’ claim that a meeting with George Bush was 40 minutes long rather a mere 25 minutes (so what?). She then goes onto paint Sarkozy as a poodle of George Bush’s, suggesting that Sarkozy ‘parroted the Bush administration’s position on the Iranian nuclear crisis’, whilst she then stating that he could be campaigning for the White House instead of the French presidency. If it is possible that Sarkozy genuinely believed in close US-French ties, and had reasons for doing so, this article doesn’t seem to suggest any. This style of reporting is not what one expects from Ireland’s premier newspaper, and does little to inspire confidence that Marlowe is telling a balanced story, and not the story that she would like us to follow.

Most ire must be kept for the sub-editor who highlights the following quote from the piece, ‘French virulence against the US is a form of jealousy over your brilliant success’. , However, when you read the article the quote is rendered ‘ the virulence of the press and part of the French elite against the US is a form of jealousy over your brilliant success’. Something quite a bit different from the first quote, not quite as sweeping, and certainly a lot more logical. Mistakes like this, and Marlowe’s partisan nature make it difficult to follow this very interesting story through the Irish Times.

Every September the youth political parties line up in campuses across the country fighting for new members. By all accounts, we in YFG have hit the ground running (given that I’m working these days, I won’t be able to help out in any of them) and we build on last year’s good showing.

Next year marks the tenth anniversary of YEPP, the Youth of the European People’s Party, and it was today served with a useful testament to its role in breeding future European leaders, with the first President of YEPP Fredrik Reinfeldt becoming the new Swedish Prime Minister. Hopefully Young Fine Gael’s two most recent members of the board of YEPP, Lucinda Creighton and Leo Varadkar can take the first steps in following in his footsteps and be elected to the Dáil next May.

Every September, the stories of the true fans who cannot get tickets for the All-Ireland final are aired. While some of this is pure rubbish, there does appear to be a fair few people who attend league games and the early rounds of the championship experiencing definite difficult in getting their hands on tickets. How one goes about solving this problem is generally given an airing, but nothing is apparently every done about it.

One possible solution which presents itself, can be found in France with the ticketing scheme for the next rugby world cup. Essentially, there is an option to buy the tickets for all the Irish matches up to the semi-final together. This can work out quite expensively, but if Ireland don’t progress you’ll have the value of the unused tickets refunded. And if they do, the guarantee of a ticket is well worth the outlay a year before.

What I would propose is that each GAA county board have the option to sell about 10,000 ‘championship’ tickets for each county. The idea would be that these tickets would guarantee entrance to every match from the provincial football semi-finals (when most, if not all games would hold at least 20,000) onto the All-Ireland final (say for €160 - this is all top of the head stuff). The value is two-fold. Firstly to the supporter, it grants an element of certainty to fans, and if things don’t work out they’ll get their money back in September.

For the county board there is also value. In football I’d reckon that 10/15 counties could sell most, if not all of these options, whilst you’d have maybe 4/5 in hurling. These tickets could be sold in January/February time, and possibly in conjunction with one of the banks to allow people pay in multiple instalments. The county boards would have to refund people some money in the vast majority of cases, but as the refund would not be due till September the county board would be able to put this money on deposit account for about 8 months which would bring in a few quid. Indeed, most people would probably just top-up the balance each year for a new ticket, rather than take the money back.

It seems to me, that this would be a useful mechanism to benefit both fans and the county boards.

When I first came across the thread on politics.ie announcing that there was going to be a major announcement a PD press conference on Thursday, I thought it was the end of Michael McDowell.

For the past year or so, I had been a believer in the idea that if he wasn’t going to become PD leader, he wouldn’t stand in the next election. After all, all the opinion polls pointed towards an end to the PD’s almost decade long stint in government, whilst the word was that opinion polls carried out in Dublin South East back in May (after the Mr. A controversy) saw McDowell under all sorts of pressure (and losing out). I didn’t think he had the stomach for another general election battle, after all, he has never defended a Dáil seat successfully, and that a he wouldn’t view a term gathering blisters on the opposition benches as something that would become a man of his self-acknowledged political and intellectual stature.

But of course (and unsurprisingly), I was wrong. Whilst Dermot Ahern may claim that Harney’s resignation was on the cards for a while, it caught everyone (including it would seem the PDs) on the hop. And even more surprisingly (at least to the uninformed observer such as myself) was the manner in which all the ducks seem to be lining up behind McDowell. By all accounts, it would appear that McDowell will be part leader (and Tanaiste?) come Monday, with Parlon becoming Party President.

So where does this leave things? Presumably Harney won’t be throw out of Health, providing as she does good cover for FF on the doorsteps, so McDowell won’t have much ability to change things on that front. He is unlikely to have reason to haul the government down over the coming months, with only the North providing reasonable grounds for the PDs to do so, and even then how would that play do their very southern electorate? So, on the big side of things, his scope for movement is limited.

I don’t see how this will effect the PDs image very much either. Harney will still be around, still be prominent and still command huge media attention on account of his cabinet position. McDowell loved, sought and gained the media spotlight before this and will do so afterwards. He is already so associated with the image of the PDs that he, that he doesn’t have that much room to change the party. He’ll get the odd photo-shoot with Bertie Ahern at cabinet meetings, and cover Leaders’ Question Time occasionally but beyond that it wouldn’t make much difference to his, or the PDs public image.

FF already uses him as a boot-boy, so I can’t see that huge amount of gain for them in this whole thing either. Indeed, considering how disliked McDowell is by the general public, it may backfire on them having him, rather than the perceived harmless Harney as Tanaiste. If Parlon or O’Donnell got the job, it would have been a lot more interesting, and potentially dangerous from the FG perspective. Both would have caused Dáil reshuffles, and represented far greater public perception changes in how we view the PDs. At present we generally view Harney and McDowell as the public face of the PDs, and this change won’t change that.

So where those all that leave us? McDowell will run again in DSE, but I don’t think he can rest easy on his laurels there. However, the manner in which Liz O’Donnell has been sidelined by this whole process there, may well mark the end of her Dáil career. Which could make Dublin South all that more friendly to two FG seats. The PDs are on a general slide towards oblivion, and through that irrelevance in opposition.

Think about it, in the next Dáil, they will most likely be in opposition. Faced with either a FG-Labour and Green/Independent coalition or an FF/Labour one, they will most likely be only slightly larger than the Socialist Party, given only minimal speaking time, and no real power on Dáil committees. McDowell might now have the job he has craved for many years, but I suspect this time next year he would rather have hung up his political boots.

As a postscript, the one thing that surprised me was how little people cared about this whole thing. On Thursday, I got a text announcing her resignation, and told a few people at work, nobody cared. Oh, and I know I am going to look like a fool when O’Donnell is elected leader and sacks McDowell.

Nicholas Sarkozy’s relationship with the youth is an interesting one, and represents something that challenges typical perceptions on how to engage with young voters. In the main, the viewpoint here is to pander to perceptions of young people, to their perceived selfish streak.

Sarkozy’s approach is somewhat different. At the recent Jeunes UMP Summer School he gave the keynote address, and suggested a number of interesting initiatives.

Among a raft of proposals, he outlined plans for interest-free loans for student entrepreneurs, special education savings accounts, and “second-chance schools” for troubled students.

He had a direct message for young people from ethnic minorities, saying they should not forget their origins but be proud of France and its heritage.

He also called for a six-month obligatory community service for 18-to 30-year-olds.

These ideas and approaches offer something which is generally lacking in Irish politics, which generally takes a two faced approach with regard to the youth vote. When issues of responsibilities are addressed, they are addressed to other constituencies of the electorate and separate to the message delivered to the young. The message to young voters is then frequently different and focused in a much different way. The recent debates in this state on ASBOs is a good example of this phenomenon.

Sarkozy’s approach, at presenting the overall message to young people, is therefore an interesting one, and one that hopefully will be emulated in the forthcoming general election here. From my experience with the Jeunes UMP, Sarkozy’s efforts would appear to be delivering results.

By and large, few things annoy me that much, however one thing that does is the film Braveheart. Not so much the film, which the one time I saw it when I was about twelve had an impressive amount of swearing, blood and gore in it, but rather its association with the town of Trim and in particular Trim Castle.

For two summers, I was privileged enough to work in Trim Castle as a tour guide. As an historical site, and a tourist attraction there are few that match it, and I would have no difficulty in recommending a visit to anyone. There are a huge number of different aspects to the castle worth considering on a visit. There is the unique cruciform keep, built to three levels over about thirty years by three generations of de Lacy’s in the late 12th and early 13th century. There is the grand hall, the Barbican, the various castle walls, the undercroft, the mint & the gatehouses.

That is with out getting into the history of the castle, its owners, the lives of those who would have occupied and worked within the castle, and the general part the place played in Irish history. In addition to the castle, Trim town has a history and ruins few others can boast in Ireland. On the outskirts of the town you have the most impressive ruins of the Cathedral of St. Peter and Paul, whilst within the town you’ve the remains of part of the medieval town walls and its gates, as well as St. Patrick’s church and St.Mary’s Abbey . That is not to mention the resplendent Bective Abbey just a few miles outside Trim.

In addition, three of the most interesting and noteworthy Irish figures from the 18th and 19th century are strongly associated with the town. Dean Swift spent his happiest years as rector of the nearby parish of Laracor. The Duke of Wellington was born and raised in the nearby locality and his first step into politics was as MP for the town, whilst one of the greatest mathematician’s Sir Rowan Hamilton was raised by his uncle and educated in the town of Trim.

Despite all this, the town continues to fail to capitalise on its historic past. The legacy of the three individuals above is largely ignored, with the bi-centary in 2005 of Rowan Hamilton attracting little attention in Trim in comparison to the relatively major events which elsewhere in the state. Whilst there have bee attempts to airbrush Wellington from the town’s history, to the extent of even removing the column raised by the people of Meath to commeration his career.

The castle is now well established in the tourist trail for Ireland, attracting about 50,000 visitors over the summer months. However despite its success, it operates largely in isolation from the other features of the town, which in the main offer no interpretative or visitor facilities.

Despite these inadequacies, the continued efforts of the town’s elders has been focused on Braveheart and the small role it played in the film. Rather than focus on aspects of the town that are associated with Ireland, and are mutually complimentary, they would prefer to turn Trim into a memorial for an American film about a Scottish man and his wars. This view recently got an airing in an opinion piece in the Meath Chronicle.

As the author puts it the failure to capitalise on this aspect of Trim’s past is ’shameful’. Citing the example of Cong and ‘The Quiet Man’, the author wonders why the same could not be carried out in Trim. Well, one reason strikes me. Cong is essential to that story, without it, the film could not exist. In comparison, Trim is merely a backdrop to Braveheart, it is as relevant to the film as a studio. While the author may ask us to look at “how Edinburgh has made hay out of the film”, surely there is a good reason why it makes sense to highlight the film in Scotland, where it can link into the history of the country, and other sites independent of the film as against Trim, where it cannot?

Trim has much to offer tourists, however the Braveheart option is very much the quick and superficial option. It may bring in greater numbers of visitors in the short term, however it will not keep them in the area, and offers little to link into the surrounding areas, and keep people in the place, spending money. By comparison, whatever people think of Wellington, the town can use that aspect of the town’s history to offer something which is unique to Trim, and can keep people in the area. As could a comprehensive offering for the town’s ruins.

Currently, the visitor to Trim is offered little reason to spend the day there, never mind a few days. Unfortunately, the focus on Braveheart is unlikely to do that. In the 1940s, Trim Town Council reputedly had the castle earmarked for destruction in order to make road rubble. Sixty years later, the appreciation of what the town’s history can offer does not seem to have moved on.

Conor Rock is a good guy from YFG, currently doing some volunteering in an orphanage in Tanzania. He has a very interesting & disturbing account of the orphanage and the corruption that runs through the place. Well worth a read.

Back in March, Mary Hannafin claimed that FG’s proposals to make Irish optional for the leaving “would destroy the future of the language“. Given that, her call for colleges to remove the necessity for pass maths for access to 3rd level ever so slightly illogical.

Unless of course she is setting out to destroy maths, or some such. Or she was talking rubbish the first time out.

See also politics.ie.

The rights and wrongs of the use of performance enhancing drugs in sport are rarely subjected to nuanced debate. The general view is fairly black and white on the issue and given that, the suggestion by Australian Rule footballer Nathan Brown is interesting. Brown has spent much of this season recovering from a few bad injuries, and in that context has called for people to be allowed to take drugs such as steroids to help recover from injury. Not sure what I make of it myself, but it gives another angle to a story that is generally presented over here in black and white.

Young Fine Gael have called for the partnership agreement to be rejected. I’ll be returning to the ‘Towards 2016′ document on this blog in the near future, but in the interim, here is the YFG press release:

Young Fine Gael (YFG) President, Elizabeth Munnelly, has called for the rejection of the social partnership agreement, “Towards 2016”, characterising it as a bad deal for the young people of Ireland.

“Across a wide number of areas, this is a bad deal for Young Ireland, in particular in the areas of suicide prevention and housing. In most aspects of the agreement, the concerns of young people have been ignored; in the few areas where they have been addressed, it is very difficult to attach any credibility to those promises.”

“Looking at suicide prevention, the proposed agreement speaks of “Ensuring implementation of the National Strategy for Action on Suicide Prevention, 2005-2014”. An admirable promise, however, we must remember that in the 2000 partnership agreement, a commitment was made to implement the recommendations of the 1998 Task Force on Suicide. This was not delivered upon. Why then, should we take this new promise at face value without definite guarantees on resources and funding?”

“This issue is far too important to be put on the long finger once more.”

“The housing aspect of the agreement, whilst long on rhetoric offers little to young people trying to get on the housing ladder. Although the document carries reference to the needs of First Time buyers, nothing of substance is offered to help alleviate the financial strain they are under, either by way of: increasing the stamp duty exemptions; a first time buyers grant; mortgage relief; or any other mechanism.

In addition to this, the failure to include a review and evaluation of Part V of the Planning and Development Act 2000-2004 is deeply disappointing. So far all the evidence from around the country suggests that it has been implemented in a haphazard, inconsistent and illogical manner. It needs an urgent review to ensure that affordable housing is provided to those that need it most.”

“These are just some of the examples of how this partnership agreement fails young people. While there are some improvements in this agreement for young people such as in the area of motor insurance, on the whole this agreement is a bad deal for young Ireland.”

“We call on all those people with a vote in the process to reject this deal”

In addition to their excellent political message board politics.ie is now going to put together an Irish politics blogs aggregator, which will be a good addition for political blogging. With the exception of Irishelection.com, coming across interesting political blogs (for me at least) involves trawling through pages and pages of Irishblogs.ie which can be a bit hit and miss. This should make that search a little bit easier and more specified.

Also, it will hopefully help bring blogs a bit closer to many involved in politics. From my own involvement in party political politics there is an awareness and a large politcal audience for politics.ie, but there is not that much knowledge or appreciation yet of blogs. Hopefully, this will help improve that as well.

The Forum on Europe has announced an interesting schedule of events for the later half of the year.

Probably the name that will grap most people’s attention will be Hans Blix on September 14th, but the 5th of October will see well know Euro-sceptic Jens Peter Bonde address the forum, Enda Kenny follows on the 25th with Josep Borrell Fontelles (European Parliament President) up at on the 30th of November. All promise to be interesting and informative speakers, with very differing perspectives on Europe’s place in the world.

Hopefully I’ll be able to make it along to one or two, in particular Enda Kenny’s and Borrell’s presentations. In the context of the general election campaign, it will be interesting to hear Enda Kenny’s thoughts on Europe.

Politics.ie carries a report of a Green Party opinion poll for Louth, which show FF under considerable pressure with regard to holding their two of the four seats.

According to the numbers quoted, FG or the Greens should be in with a real shout of taking the FF seat, and returning 3 opposition TDs for the constituency.

FF 34.6% - FG 30.76% - LAB 5.76% - SF 15.38% - GR 9.61% - IND 3.84%

It also helps explain Dermot Ahern’s comments the other day.

Obviously however, this is all to be taken with a pinch of salt, as it is leaked from the Greens (and with no details of poll size) with a specific purpose in mind.

Submissions are being sought for the next edition of the Informer, Young Fine Gael’s ezine and should be sent to editor John Kennedy at johnfgkennedy@gmail.com. The last edition is available here.

The National Youth Council have come out with a useful policy proposal today for first time buyers:

The National Youth Council of Ireland has called for the re-introduction of the First Time Buyers Grant at a new rate of €8,000 to support young people attempting to purchase their first home.

The enormous increase in the cost of property in the last decade has left many young people who are trying to get onto the property ladder priced out of the market and unable to compete with wealthy investors and speculators, according to NYCI’s pre-election manifesto.

It argues that the First Time Buyers Grant, which was controversially axed in 2002 should be re-introduced at a rate of €8,000 to level the playing field for these young house-hunters.

In the ten years between 1994 and 2004, the average price of a new house rose by 243% and by 322% for a second hand house. In the same period, the cost of purchasing a house increased from 4.2 times the average industrial wage to 9.1 times the average.

Commenting on the issue, James Doorley, NYCI Assistant Director said “It is extremely disheartening and frustrating to the many people trying to save for a deposit that the government, landowners, builders, developers and financial institutions continue to thrive on the property boom while young people are frozen out and forgotten about.

To cover the cost of re-introducing the Grant at the new rate of €8,000, the National Youth Council of Ireland is proposing the re-introduction of the bank levy which was phased out in this year’s budget. The levy, a tax on the profits of certain banks brought in €100 million per year, the annual estimated cost of re-introducing the First time Buyers Grant at the new rate, according to the NYCI.”

“Largely as a result of our overwhelmingly successful property market, Ireland’s banks are among the wealthiest of Europe” continued James Doorley. “Unlike an extra tax on landowners or builders, it is unlikely that any levy on the banks will be passed on to consumers, given the competitive nature of the mortgage market.. Asking those who benefit most from spiralling house prices, the financial institutions, would also have the added bonus of not placing an extra burden on ordinary taxpayers.”

Due to the threat of the US veto, the UN Security Council failed to condemn the murder of 4 UNIFIL observers by Israel the other day. Now, could someone remind me why we gave this body a veto over what we do with our armed forces?

Councillor Aodhán Ó Ríordáin , Dublin’s recently elected Deputy Lord Mayor, is not afraid to offer his opinions on international matters. Most recently he addressed the Irish Anti-War movements protest against the visit of Florida Governor Jeb Bush’s visit to Dublin, and has plenty of views of on this issue. Given this, it is a pity that he is not particularly clued into Irish foreign policy. In a recent interview on Irishelection.com, when asked about the Triple Lock, and the Chinese veto over Irish involvement in the EU force to Macedonia, his answer was surprisingly short and succinct:

I wouldn’t know enough about that situation to make an informed comment.

I suppose one could compliment him on his honesty. But I would hope that if an electred representative, and a civic leader in Dublin, is going to pontificate on international matters, he would at least know the framework in which this country’s international affairs operates. Especially if it is a position his party fervently holds.

When he was first elected, I had a lot of time for Chavez. However every year of his rule has been a dissapointment to this Irish observer, as he has seemingly chosen populism and his own personal ego-mania over genuine advancment for his people.

This weeks tour of the globe highlights my problem with the man. Rather than focus on Venezula’s problems, he is today praising Belarus’s dictator Lukashenko and describing Belarus as “as a model social state“. Then he is off to spend $1 billion on arms in Russia, then to cosy up to Iran. He had previously plans to visit North Korea (unfortunately cancelled) and he might pop into Syria.

The bloke is a nutter, spending his countries oil wealth on foreign adventures which serve no tangible benefit to his people. His current campaign for the UN Security Council only purpose is to give him a bigger international stage to his ego. However, he still does a good line in anti-American rhetoric, so the usual crew will find excuses for this tour.

Hidden away on page 1 beside obituaries of local notables, the editorials of the Meath Chronicle don’t generally attract much notice. However, in the current edition (published on Wednesday - available on Unison) the editor has focused on the current Middle East crisis, siding very much with Israel and warning vigilance with regard to the media output on this subject. It makes for interesting reading.

GROTESQUE images in recent times of Western hostages being beheaded on live TV in the Middle East and deranged Muslim suicide bombers blowing up innocent civilians on packed buses and restaurants in downtown Tel Aviv is often met with a sense of shock accompanied by deafening silence in some EU states, particularly in Ireland amongst many unenlightened liberals.

…

Bear in mind, an irresponsible media will always focus on the simplistic emotive imagery of this conflict because the ramifications are way too complex to broadcast or publish to a mass audience. It’s easier to scream ‘suffer little children’ or ‘slaughter of the innocents’ than to explore in-depth what’s really going on in this region.

Whatever way this carnage ends up, it would be advisable for citizens both here and abroad to take their media messengers with a hint of healthy scepticism and thorough reasoning.

Popular polemic journalists aspiring to win the Pulitzer Prize by writing fancy prose bordering on propaganda (with the odd tokenistic paragraphs condemning ‘the other side’) might fool naïve armchair observers. But we have to be on the ball in discarding such propaganda.

The excellent Transitions Online Belarus Blog carries details of two practical examples of aid that a country like Ireland could provide to those working for democracy in Belarus. One is a Czech project to provide intensive training in journalism for Belarusian students, the other the creation of a school for Belarusian studies in the Southwestern College in the US. Measures like these are example of what a country like Ireland can and should contribute to help Belarus become a democracy with a vibrant and open civil society.

Related posts: Belarus - Can Ireland do something?

Fresh from their rebuff in Europe, Ógra Fianna Fáil are now focusing their attentions on Northern Ireland, with the announcment yesterday of plans of setting up branches in the Northern Irish universities. This is something that I have long believed Young Fine Gael should do, and was one, of a range of good ideas that Ray McAdam unsuccessfully took to the YFG membership in 2004.. Whilst this year is far too soon, in particular in the context of a YFG fully mobilised for a general election, it is something that deserves fresh consideration, and hopefully we will do likewise in September 12 months.

In my own view, Ireland’s involvement in the United Nations is something in which we can take great pride in as a nation. Stretching from the role Conor Cruise-O’Brien played in standing up to the western powers in Katanga, and the subsequent Irish military operations there, to modern day engagement in Liberia, many Irish people under be they humanitarian workers, soldiers, policemen or soldiers have done this country proud through the auspices of the United Nations.

This positive view of Irish engagement in the UN has had one principle side-effect amongst the general public, which is to view the UN as an inherently moral body. This charmingly naïve view-point has had one remarkable outcome for Irish foreign policy, the ‘Triple-Lock’, which means that for Irish troops to be deployed, the Irish government, the Oireachtais and then the United Nations must all approve the mission.

Whilst a nice idea in theory, and considered in 2002 to be a price worth paying to get the Nice Treaty though, the Triple Lock in its simple format is a ridiculous measure on three fronts. Unfortunately, there has been relatively little considered public debate on this subject, although it has recently attracted some interest in a few blogs.

In its basic format, the Triple Lock is firstly a vote of no confidence in the Oireachtais and the Government when it comes to the deployment of our defence forces. Rather than trust the elected representatives of the Irish people to make the decision on how, where and if this state deploys its armed forces, it leaves the final decision to a body to which Ireland has very, very little influence. For a vibrant, independent, non-threatened and democratic state to assert such a lack of confidence in its own elected bodies is staggering, and to my knowledge, unprecedented.

Secondly, the ‘Triple-Lock’ in effect hands a veto over Irish military action to the members of the United Nation Security Council (UNSC), in particular to the five permanent members; the United States, China, France, Russia and Great Britain. It does not take a particularly astute observer to note that each of these nations have their own strategic interests over which they will cast a veto and therefore prevent Irish participation in an international mission. Already this has been done with regards to Macedonia. Despite supporting the deployment of the first peace-keeping mission by an EU force in Macedonia a number of years ago, Ireland was unable to participate. Why? Because although the UN had supported the deployment of the EU mission originally, China vetoed giving the EU mission UN approval as Macedonia had recognised Taiwan.

If civil unrest were to break out in any of Europe’s neighbouring countries, it is unlikely that the UNSC would approve a mission because of the Russian veto. This is not just an abstract issue. The collapse of a number of states on the European Union’s eastern border is a realistic possibility, and could have grave consequences for the stability of member states of the Union. Imagine for a moment if such a scenario occurred in Moldova where the central government collapsed, and ethnic tensions threatened to spill into Romania.

Russia is unlikely to permit the UNSC to act, at least not in a timely fashion. In order to fill the vacuum and prevent the overspill of such an internal collapse and to prevent further domestic unrest, the EU could approve the battle-groups to move into Moldova to stabilise the situation. Such an action would most likely receive the full approval of the Irish state, yet whilst we would have a role in authorising other states to undertake such military action through the EU, we would be unable to do so ourselves. In a matter which would be of direct consequence to this state, we would not be able to support our EU colleagues because of a veto we have given the UNSC over our military forces.

Thirdly, the triple-lock is largely amoral, as it allows this state to abdicate our responsibility to act, to a body (the UNSC) we know that has failed continuously in the past and stood idly by whilst genocide has occurred. By allowing states, which have and still are obviously and objectively breaching international law and abusing the human rights, even of their own citizens to decide our military action is utterly shameful, and redolent of the politics of the cop-out. Rather than assert ourselves morally (obviously in conjunction with other democracies) through military actions when the situation calls for it, we are allowing other states to make the decision for us, knowing full well that in the hard cases they won’t. This is the basest form of politics, in allowing us to preach morality to the world, with little chance of us being called to account for our rhetoric.

Billy Timmons put it nicely in a Dáil question in early 2005:

“Does the Minister agree that while the triple lock may be an emotive issue, we in this country treat the UN in the same way as a dysfunctional family uses a comfort blanket and the time has come to make decisions for ourselves on a case by case basis?”

That is certainly what any state, confident in its own legislature and willing to play a constructive role internationally would do.

An argument can be made that whilst the government continue to endorse the Triple Lock, they are begining to acknowledge the failures of it. This may be why the Triple-Lock is fundamentally flawed in design, as offered in the recently amended Defence Act. Although primarily a matter of policy, comments made in the past year by Minister O’Dea, the Seville Declaration and the amended Defence Act suggest that it is enshrined in legisation. This legislation would appear to have a flaw within it, as it appplies to humanitarian missions.

During his commentary on the Second Stage of the Defence Act in early July, Minister O’Dea stated that the triple-lock would not apply in cases of humanitarian necessity:

Section 3 provides for the despatch on overseas service of members or contingents of the Permanent Defence Force on a range of assignments, including carrying out representational duties, filling staff postings, going on training courses, ceremonial duties, visits, meetings, sporting events and fact-finding missions outside the State, as they have always done. Some of these duties have been part of Permanent Defence Force operations since the foundation of the State.
Two provisions in section 3 require specific mention, namely, participation in exercises which will include field exercises and is an extension of the existing training regime, and deployment on humanitarian tasks.
…
As a matter of course, there is no UN Security Council resolution for humanitarian operations in response to disasters since they do not generally represent a threat to international peace and security. It is vital the Government can respond to legitimate and urgent requests for humanitarian relief by affected states in the immediate aftermath of a disaster, including being able to provide resources and equipment which may only be available from military means, such as temporary accommodation, tents, water treatment plants, generators, lifting equipment and other capabilities. Under the current arrangements, the Government has no authority in this area and Defence Forces personnel must volunteer for service with a civil undertaking, such as an NGO, in the same manner as any ordinary citizen, whereupon the NGO would then deploy them to the disaster area. The provision in this Bill provides the requisite authority for the Government to despatch members or contingents of the Permanent Defence Force on humanitarian operations.

Now, the reason this is of particular interest, is that the nature of a humanitarian mission is open to wide interpretation. Certainly, it would not require a particularly skilled politician to argue that an Irish military presence in a war zone, provided it was not engaged in direct warfare but rather in the movement of supplies, setting up of refugee camps, the provision of policing duties and the protection of civilians was a humanitarian and not military mission, and therefore would not need a UNSC mandate.

As the legislation itself states:

3.—(1) A contingent or member of the Permanent Defence Force
may, with the prior approval of and on the authority of the Government, be despatched for service outside the State for the purposes of—

(a) carrying out duties as a military representative or filling appointments or postings outside the State, including secondments to any international organisation,
(b) conducting or participating in training,
(c) carrying out ceremonial duties, participating in exchanges or undertaking visits,
(d) undertaking monitoring, observation or advisory duties,
(e) participating in or undertaking reconnaissance or fact-finding missions,
(f) undertaking humanitarian tasks in response to an actual or potential disaster or emergency,
(g) participating in sporting events, or
(h) inspecting and evaluating stores, equipment and facilities.

Possibly I am being over cynical, and the confusion that arose after the Tsunami in 2004 is most likely the primary driving force behind this inclusion. But I do believe this has been included to allow this state to have enough wiggle room to act, if necessary outside of a UN mandate. After all, is there any crisis which necessitates military action, that is not already, or soon to become a humanitarian crisis as well?

A similiar point has been also been raised in relation to this by the Green Party , who argued at the time this was brought before the Dáil:

Section 3 makes it clear that not even Dail approval is required for certain operations. The Green Party can understand that military personnel attending sporting events or on ceremonial duties should be able to do so with Government approval only. However, contingents of troops involved in such areas as training, military reconnaissance, or humanitarian tasks in response to ‘actual’ or potential’ disaster or emergency should not be able to be dispatched at the whim of a Government. The question which Minister O’Dea refused to answer from Green Party Deputy, John Gormley, in the Dail last week is: what happens if our troops are fired upon in such circumstances? Also, the EU Battlegroups are supposed to be involved in humanitarian tasks under the Petersberg Tasks. It appears that Section 3 leaves the way open for Irish troops to participate in EU Battlegroups in such instances without any UN mandate, let alone even Dail approval. The definition of ‘humanitarian tasks’ can be extremely broad: when NATO began its bombing campaign in Kosovo in March 1999, NATO argued that it was to ‘avert a humanitarian catastrophe’. Much tighter controls will be required in Section 3 for certain overseas military activities.

The Triple Lock as presented is a base measure, that it is poorly designed with a number of gaping holes in it in addition to the above. We have a position on the Triple Lock which is being stringently enforced (as with the EU mission in Macedonia) and apparently enshrined in legislation, yet the most recent Defence Act allows copious wiggle room within it. However, given the Seville Declaration, and the attachment of all the political parties to the Triple Lock (bar only Fine Gael) the most basic understanding of the lock will continue to apply for the forseeable future, which is most unfortunate.

Good news abounds about the possibilities of free or nearly free Wi-Fi for Dublin. However as Ryano has pointed out in the comments section here: ”

However, there’s an interesting quote from eircom at the very end of the [Sunday Business Post] article:

When asked whether it would be interested in participating in such a public-private partnership, a spokesman for Eircom said: ‘‘That would assume that we accepted the establishment of the network in the first place.””

As he also points out, the aim problem probably won’t be the City Council but rather commercial interests:

“Switching on a citywide hotspot would be an admirable public service by the City Council, but it would bring them into immediate conflict with existing commercial interests, i.e. broadband and WiFi access providers like eircom, BT and BitBuzz. These companies would view any free or even cut-price access as unfair competition with their own offerings. This is almost certainly what lies at the root of the City Manager’s reluctance to push this one forward.

How have the other international cities been able to deal with the problem of commercial interests?

With the latest reports highlighting the large profits on offer in the banking trade in Ireland, one wonders why most of the big international players (with the exception of RBS) have kept their hands in their pockets, and stayed out of the Irish market. The most convincing answer to this question is a widespread fear amongst the international banks that the Irish banks is over-exposed to property.

That the big international banks are prepared to forgo the profits on offer here based on this belief, is not something that inspires a lot of confidence in the soft-landing we are constantly told to expect over here.

Despite attracting little or no public interest in this country; the plight of Belarus is something that should agitate the minds of Ireland’s outward looking political classes. As a fully paid up and enthusiastic member of the European Union, we should concern ourselves with the case of a European country on our borders ruled by an undemocratic, sinister and oppressive regime.

It is not something that many politicos here are ignorant of, the recent ‘election‘ attracted some coverage, whilst a regular glance at BBC’s website will throw up regular stories on the situation over there. Indeed today they carry a story on a Belarus opposition leader gaoled for five years. In addition to that, there are plenty of those, who like myself, have attended European political events in recent years, and will have heard first hand stories and details from activists from Belarus. We are all aware of the situation over there, but have largely chosen to remain agnostic to it.

I would, in my own way, count myself amongst those that argue for a moral foreign policy for Ireland and for the European Union. However, in framing such a policy that would gain wide support in this country, the difficulty has always been the partisan nature of those interested in foreign policy; one is for or against the United States and nearly everything flows from that. On the issues where the US is not involved, we have been slow to care, the only notable example in recent years being East Timor.

Like East Timor, but closer to home, Belarus is a place for which such foreign policy could be aimed. It is a subject which is largely unpartisan (provided one accepts that democracy and freedom are broadly good things), and more importantly it is something in which Ireland can have an impact.

Domestically, we can provide funds and initiatives to help support Belarus civil society, but more importantly in the context of the European Union, we can support those member-states who are placing this issue to the fore. That is not to say that measures have not been taken. But those modest steps by the EU have been seemingly inadequate. From Ireland, Dermot Ahern and the DFA have been doing some good work, delivering funds to the European Humanities University (EHU) and its work with Belarusian students. But these measures can be rapidly improved upon. From the perspective of funding, particularly with regard to education, we could provide multiples more for the EHU and further to that, facilitate Belarusian students to come here for third level education and learn skills which can then be taken back to Belarus. We can also provide direct funding to aid independent media services in Belarus and to help develop their civil society. Within the European Union, we can play a role in supporting those countries on Belarus’ borders which are placing this on the agenda, and lend the weight of a country with no local interest to the debate.

The point is not so much the specifics of what we can do, but the realisation that we can do something, and within the context of the European Union, that something can indeed be something. However, whilst a small number within Irish politics will continue to take this forward, it will not be a priority in this government or the next, unless there is genuine pressure from within the system to make it a priority. For that to happen, there needs to be a cross-party consensus on the subject, that pro-active measures are something worth doing and that it is intolerable for the Irish government to do nothing with regard to a country on the EU’s borders.

Myself and a few others have been looking at this issue, and are keen to develop a campaign of sorts, which although obviously political is non-partisan and would encompass people from across the political divide, the aim of which would be to raise awarenss of Belarus in Ireland and to encourage the Irish government to take a more pro-active stance on this issue. At this stage, we have not moved far in looking at how we would be able to develop a broad spectrum of support for this, and what form (if any) a campaign could or should take. With that in mind, we are eager for any ideas, help and involvment. So if anyone out there has any interest in developing this as an issue, in helping to promote the case for greater and more sustained pressure on the Lukashenko regime, and get Ireland to support of freedom for civil society in Belarus, please get in touch.

The main focus of the launch of Young Fine Gael’s youth voting campaign will naturally focus on the get registered aspect of it, particularly in the run up to the next election. However, we also produced a policy paper outling our views on how to get young people involved in Irish democracy. The document covers a variety of areas, from involvment in school, in local authorities, voter registration and youth political parties. It is available in a word document here from the YFG website. For those with a dislike of Word, I have also reproduced it on this site here.

Enda Kenny is launching YFG’s voter registration campaign today, under the slogan ‘Your Future Counts, Stand Up & Be Counted’. The main purpose of this campaign is to help inform people out there, especially young people of how the registration process works, and also to emphasise the importance of the vote.

More details here.

The BBC report that Ravenhill is being considered as the venue for one of the World Cup warm-up matches in 2007. Getting the smaller international games out to the provinces is something that should definitely be encouraged. But the main thing which interests me is the question of the national anthem.

Ireland’s Calls is the anthem for all Irish international rugby matches, but at Dublin matches, ‘Amhrán na bhFiann’ is sung as well. As I understand it, this is a courtesy to the host state, so if an international game is played in Ravenhill, ‘God Save the Queen’ will be sung. It is always easy to get a rise out of some of the more reactionary cranks out there of the fact that ‘Amhrán na bhFiann’ is not planned at away rugby matches, so it willl be great to see their reaction over this if it goes ahead.

Edit1: According to Slugger O’Toole and On the Ditch this is a done deal.

Seems a bit incredible, but according to Barry Walsh on politics.ie when you contact the HSE about medical cards, they refer you to a party political website sporting both Fianna Fáil’s and the PDs logo, and owned by the PDs. Amazing stuff, and pretty poor form really by the relevant authorities.

Update 1: Didn’t notice this yesterday, but Enda Kenny put a press statement out on this yesterday evening.

On the excellentOz Politics Blog, there is a quite comprehensive political test, which gives you a compatability rating for each political party over in Australia, as well as placing you on a left to right spectrum on a variety of areas: political outlook, economic policy, social policy and traditional values. It seems that if I was to emigrate down under, it would seem that I’d be able to fit in with all of the parties scoring between 40% & 60% for all of them, being either in the centre, or centre-right or centre-left on each of the four tested areas. I particularly like the page where it compares people to their declared political party and also lists all the cumulative scores so far. Interesting stuff, although given the like of ideological definition on display across the political spectrum in Ireland, such an excercise wouldn’t be hugely productive over here.

Given its reclusive nature, it is fairly difficult to come by comment from the North Korean government on their actions. Usually their state media agency’s web presence is devoted to such excitment as “Pyongyang Builders Vow to Spruce Up Riversides of Taedong” and “Kim Jong Il Lauded by Head of Russian Dance Company”. However, today’s output carries one piece of significance, a statement from the North Korean Foreign Ministry on the recent missile launches:

Pyongyang, July 6 (KCNA) — A spokesman for the DPRK Foreign Ministry gave the following answer to a question raised by KCNA Thursday as regards the missile launches in the DPRK: In the wake of the missile launches by the Korean People’s Army the U.S. and some other countries following it, including Japan, are making much ado about a serious development. They are terming them “violation” and “provocation” and calling for “sanctions” and “their referral to the UN Security Council.”
The latest successful missile launches were part of the routine military exercises staged by the KPA to increase the nation’s military capacity for self-defence.
The DPRK’s exercise of its legitimate right as a sovereign state is neither bound to any international law nor to bilateral or multilateral agreements such as the DPRK-Japan Pyongyang Declaration and the joint statement of the six-party talks.
The DPRK is not a signatory to the Missile Technology Control Regime and, therefore, is not bound to any commitment under it.
As for the moratorium on long-range missile test-fire which the DPRK agreed with the U.S. in 1999, it was valid only when the DPRK-U.S. dialogue was under way.

Continued on here.

It makes for some interesting reading.

As to what can be done? Well, firstly military actions is not exactly a credible option, given the size of the North Korean military, and its proximity to Seoul in particular. Whilst the generals have talked the talk about the ability to destroy the North Korean artillery forces in lighting strikes, one would be particularly rash to risk the lives of millions on the self-confidence of an over-stretched US military. Secondly, no-one wants the North Korean government to collapse (at least not suddenly), so the isolationist route won’t really go either, nor will sanctions or an embargo be a particularly effective tool against such a reclusive state. Indeed any form of prolonged stand-off is the last thing one wants, even if it amounts to nothing more than hot-air given the effects it will have on Japanese public opinion, and the disastrous spill-over that an increasingly defensive and military focused Japan will have on the region.

To my mind the only obvious and sane route, is the diplomatic one. Use the UNSC, go back to the six-party talks, get the Chinese and the Russians to put the pressure on, offer bi-lateral talks for serious and verifiable concessions, have the US to sign a non-aggression treaty in return for commitments on nuclear weaponry and missile testing, and little by little try and open up the borders with North Korea, undermining the regime solely and in the long-term. The thing to remember most of all, is that the recent tests were a failure, with the Taepodong-2 failing in under a minute (Call the tests a failure, rather than ‘provocative’). In my over-simplified and generalised view of the situation, the time is for Bush to show genuine leadership, and engage with North Korea, defuse the situation and return the region to some form of normalcy. Unfortunately, there does not seem to be any huge desire to do so.

A National Assembly will take place on the Sunday of the Summer School on July 30th. As is says on the website:

A National Assembly will be held at this year’s Summer School in the Brandon Hotel Tralee at 11 am on Sunday, 30 July, 2006.

The National Assembly consists of a delegation from each affiliated Young Fine Gael branch. The Branch Chairperson, or where unable to attend, the Branch vice-Chairperson, and two other delegates chosen by the branch can attend.

The purpose of the assembly is for the National Executive to brief members on what is happening in YFG between conferences, and also for the exec to be held to account for their actions. Should be interesting enough, with this being the first such Assembly (by my reckoning) since the Ard Fheis in May 04.

YourTechstuff has a piece on an approach by a “major network provider” to Dublin City Council with regard to the issue of a city-wide broadband network. But according to the piece, this was rejected as “the Council (a) doesn’t get it (b) isn’t interested and (c) doesn’t think anyone else would care enough for it to be worth its while, according to an executive in the network provider”. Hopefully this is not the case, but it does fit in with the unenthusiastic response of the outgoing city manager on this issue back in February. Labour’s Anne Carter asked

Will the City Manager (a) give a bi-monthly progress report to the City Council on Dublin City Council’s involvement and research into I.T. and broadband rollout for the city and will he consider establishing a monitoring group of interested officials, councillors and citizens (including those involved in the industry); (b) report on the usage of the fibre optic MAN encompassing the city and his plans to increase access to this facility for homes and businesses; (c) outline any plans he has to create a WiFi hotspot for the whole city; and (d) indicate any potential for new income streams from I.T. and broadband infrastructure
facilitated by Dublin City Council and other City Councils.

In response she was told:

The fibre optic cable and ducts that are currently installed in Dublin City and the greater Dublin area is primarily used to support Traffic Management and is the responsibility of the Director of Traffic. From a broadband point of view it is not currently suitable for the general connection of individual buildings or users due to it’s limited locations and limited access
points. The system is also primarily an analogue system with limited sections that are digitally “lit”. A substantial investment would need to be made if this infrastructure was to be used for general broadband users. The cost would not be commercially attractive considering the current number and types of service providers operating in the Dublin City Council area Competition is increasing and on going reduced charges are evident. It would be possible to use portions of this infrastructure to support a public based WiFi infrastructure in parallel with other Council assets and other agencies. As outlined in Q1 of 2006 the current plan is to organically grow the public access to WiFi in the Dublin City area through the increased availability of WiFi at DCC locations, library branches and in partnership with agencies such as the Digital Hub. No large-scale investment is planned in the current financial year for faster or greater growth than this. Following the analysis of tenders and the experience in other LA’s involvement in Fibre MANs there is no potential net income streams for Dublin City Council in Broadband infrastructure schemes. A monitoring group would not be required for the level of planned activities but reports could be prepared covering the issues and activities to promote the greater use of both broadband and WiFi within Dublin City Council’s Area

Unfortunately, at the current moment in time DCC would not appear too pushed about the whole idea, which is a pity considering the huge benefits it could bring to Dublin for residents, students, business people and tourist. However, this issue has been raised in the past few months by at least three councillors to my knowledge: Anne Carter as mentioned above, as well as Fine Gael’s Naoise O’Muiri and Lucinda Creighton. Indeed, Cllr. Creighton came out strongly in support of looking at developing a city-wide WiFi network a few months back, modelled on a Boston initiative. Hopefully, these councillors will keep the pressure on with regard to this issue, and get some positive movement in this area. Indeed, with the election approaching this would be a very good issue for joint work from both Fine Gael and Labour.

Edit to add: Outside of the City Council, Tommy Broughan has been particularly vocal and articulate on this and similiar issues.

The Sunday Business Post’s latest the Red C opinion poll which does not show much change from last month. Fianna Fail are continued on their downward trend, now standing at 34%. FG have stayed steady at 26%, with Labour down 2 points to 12%. The rest, Sinn Fein, the Greens and PDs, are a 9%,7% and 3% respectively.

From an FG viewpoint, the main thing is that this confirms that the performance in the polls in May was not a flash in the pan, and that they are now being seen by many as a party of government, with support for FF continuing to slide.

Pat Leahy’s analysis of the figures is available here. So far, the media have gone for the FF in decline headlines with RTE leading the story under the banner “Support for Fianna Fail falls again” as have the SBP “FF support slips again in poll’.

Sicilian Notes has stumbled across the excellent Korean Friendship Association website. The KFA is an international organisation based in Madrid which more or less represents North Korea to the world, and offers a truly bizarre view of the reclusive Stalinist regime. Although the inclination is to view the rather unusual site as a (very, very elaborate) hoax, it seems not. The BBC after all links to the site as a site of the North Korean government.

There was a good article in the Asia Times a while back giving an overview on the site. Essentially it offers a portal to nearly every aspect of the socialist paradise of North Korea, and attracted my attention as it offered the possibility of visiting the country. Boing Boing had a great piece this time last year on a holiday video on the site, and the subsequent behaviour from the website. Indeed, the video of the 2005 trip to North Korea is available here. Some great stuff on the site, and I have long been a fan since first noticing it last year.

Also, on a related note, the website of the North Korean Press Agency (hosted in Japan) is also worth a look, being the only other semi-official North Korean presence on the web to my knowledge.

Young Fine Gael reaction to the election of Sally Ann Flanagan as Tuam Mayor:

Young Fine Gael (YFG) President, Elizabeth Munnelly, has today congratulated Councillor Sally Ann Flanagan on her election in Tuam as Ireland’s youngest Mayor at the age of 22.

“Cllr Flanagan has achieved a huge amount for Tuam in her two years on the Council. I wish her every success as Mayor and am confident that she will enhance the office of Mayor with her youthful and enthusiastic approach.”

Fine Gael has more Councillors under 30 than the combined total of the Progressive Democrats and Greens of any age. One in five of Fine Gael General Election Candidate’s are under 35.

There are no TDs under 35 in any other political party. Fine Gael have five: Damien English (Meath West), Simon Coveney (Cork South Central), Paul Kehoe (Wexford), Olwyn Enright (Laois/ Offaly) and Denis Naughten (Roscommon/ South Leitrim).

Fine Gael also have three Senators under 35 one of whom, John Paul Phelan, (Carlow/ Kilkenny), is the youngest Oireachtas member at age 27.

“I would also like to congratulate former President of Young Fine Gael, Cllr. Richard Daly, at being selected to run for Fine Gael in the General Election for the Kildare South Constituency”.

With his term as Chair of Meath County Council coming to a close, Brian Fitzgerald gives the Meath Chronicle an overview of what he sees as the challenges facing the county in the future. Calling for a ‘dynamic council’ he places considerable emphasis on the problem of Meath County Councils rate base:

The size of the challenge was outlined by Colr Fitzgerald when he said that, without increasing the rate base of the county to the level of Fingal and Louth, Meath would be not be able to survive. “We need to get the rate base from its present e14 million to e50 million within five years. That is a stark figure. If we don’t set our minds to getting it, then we will just never get it, and we will not be able to provide even the basis infrastructure, or keep things going at their present rate,” he predicted.

This is a frequent refrain from Meath county councillors, the problem being that while Meath’s population has grown hugely in the past decade or so, there has been no comparable increase in the county’s commercial or industrial population . Brian Fitzgerald and the other county councillors who complain about the problem of the rates base are undoubtedly right. However, one wonders about the credibility of those complainants, when those self same councillors voted for the rezonings which have hugely increased the counties population. Did they ever seek to ask where the money would come from?

For years Irish rugby teams were renown for spells of competivity for about 50 minutes, before being blown away. A brief look at all three tests (NZ 1, 2 and Aus) would appear to suggest that it is the last ten minutes is now where we really struggle. Up until the 71st minute in both of the New Zealand tests, Ireland were were in contention, leading 23-21 in the first test and trailing 20-17. However, in the last ten minutes of both test, they conceded 20 points in total, and scored nothing. In Saturday’s game, it was a 69th minute unconverted try that broke Ireland’s back, with a George Gregan effort putting the home team 30-15 ahead. This was followed up by a Cameron Shepherd effort six minutes later to allow the Australians win 37-15.

So what is the basis of this lack of competivity in the final eighth? Fitness levels? Concentration? A failure to bring on fresh legs? Or the southern hemisphere outfits just being too good? To be honest, I’m not sure, and I don’t think Eddie O’Sullivan knows either.

In the latest edition of the Meath Chronicle, PD general election candidate Sirena Campbell condemns the fact that Meath does not have a Blue Flag beach. Whilst not exactly the most pressing of priorities for Meath C.o Co. in my book, it is certainly an issue and there is not harm in raising it. However the main focus of Campbell’s remarks, that this was disgraceful in comparison to the other counties on the East Coast are ridiculous. As she told the Meath Chronicle;

“Of the 81 bathing areas which received Blue Flag awards under the scheme, Louth received two, Dublin six, Wicklow two, Wexford four and Waterford three. Meath can hang its head and wait for an excuse once again from our county council… It is unacceptable that we are the only county along the coastline that does not have such a blue flag designation.

Meath can indeed hang its head in shame, but what was the logic of such a comparison? No matter what situation emerges, Meath County Council will never be able to match any of the hauls listed above, as we have by far and away the smallest coastline of those counties. Indeed, according to QUALITY OF BATHING WATERS (AMENDMENT) REGULATIONS, 1996, there is only one Meath bathing area which has its water tested, which is Bettystown/Laytown. As this is an essential criteria on which Blue Flag status is judged it does seem a tad harsh, and ever so unfair for Ms. Campbell to attempt to cast Meath County Council as failures for not delivering numerous Blue Flags like the rest of our East Coast brethren. Hold them up to account for not delivering the poor quality at Bettystown/Laytown, as the Co. Co. didn’t even submit our sole beach for consideration by the jury, but to condemn them in comparison to the other counties which all have much more substantial coast lines and number of beaches is a bit stupid.

Last weekend the Youth of the European People’s Party held their bi-annual congress in Mallorca. In her capacity as President of Young Fine Gael, Elizabeth Munnelly addressed the congress, and her speech in full will soon be up on the Young Fine Gael website.

Fine Gael’s website have a number of extracts from the speech, which dealt with the issue of the responsibility of Europe’s current youth, to themselves, their families and the rest of humanity. As part of this, Young Fine Gael were to the fore at the congress in proposing measures on human trafficking which were accepted by the YEPP Council.

Extracts from the speech:

“Young people are often told about their “rights” - a right to free accommodation, to social security, to accommodation. But what are we telling our young people about their responsibilities?”

“A sense of duty and responsibility is key to solving the problems of economic depression, the integration of immigrants, the creation of a family centered society and the ending of injustice in the developing world”

…

“We need to see greater European co-operation in relation to the pursuit and prosecution of those who trade in the sexual exploitation of human beings as well as the protection of victims of this modern form of slavery.”

It would warm my heart greatly to believe that the depth and quaility of rugby around the globe is improving, and certain things would point in that direction. However, New Zealand rugby still remains undisputed king, as was clearly shown this weekend and confirmed next weekend. As I need not remind rugby fans, Ireland played manfully but lost to the New Zealand test team on Saturday. Next weekend, another entirely different New Zealand team will play and beat Argentina. Ireland and Argentina are probably the fifth and sixth best international teams in the world at the moment, and both have/will put up decent performances against the All-Blacks. Unfortunately, it is hard to imagine either ever beating them.

To make matters even worse, the NZ A Team, the Junior All-Blacks (in effect their third team) are just after demolishing all-comers in the inagural Pacific Cup. To cap that, what could be described as a fourth tier New Zealand team, the Maoris have just won the Churchill Cup in convincing style. New Zealand rugby has so much more talent and depth than other nation, that it is arguable that they are stifling the development of the game’s international competition. Certainly it is not a good thing for the game internationally, that one country is so far ahead over everyone else.

I suppose the only thing to comfort us is that they’ll probably bottle it at the World Cup.

Browsing the website of the Korean Friendship Association (the organisation which represents North Korea to the world) the other day, I came across this piece outlining the business opportunities over there. North Korea has been over the past few years, gradually embracing some economic reforms, but I was genuinely surprised that the first item on their list of opportunities for business investment was the “Lowest labour costs in Asia”.

Not something one would expect a socialist paradise to be boasting about.

For the YFGers out there, the Young Fine Gael summer school will take place on July 29th and 30th in Tralee and will focus on youth participation in Irish politics. More details will soon be up on the YFG website.

There is a widespread pessimism out there with regards to voter turnout amongst observers of Irish politics. According to an academic paper Voter turnout in the Republic of Ireland by Pat Lyons and Richard Sinnott from 2003;

Ireland is at the bottom of the table of average turnout in the period since 1970 (71.2 per cent), second from bottom in terms of turnout in most recent election (63 per cent in 2002) and third from top in terms of the size of the fall in turnout over the last three decades (15 per centage points).

This perception is certainly widespread. Back in 2004, the National Youth Council were seeking to raise awareness around the issue of youth participation in politics and commented “It’s with all of us. Despite the fact that Ireland is, in the context of the European Union, a relatively new democracy, we have one of the poorest voter turnout rates in elections of any EU member state.”

This widespread belief that the Irish electorate fail to turnout in numbers compared to electorates elsewhere, leads into a pessimism about the strength of Irish democracy and public connection with the governments we supposedly elect. Nora Owen writing in the Irish Times in late 2004 commented that “Disconnection is best exemplified in the declining rates of electoral participation. Ireland has been experiencing falling electoral turnout in recent decades.”

That seems like a fairly logical and fair conclusion based on the view that the figures we have for electoral turnout accurately reflect voter participation in elections. Indeed, on a thread over on politics.ie, there is a despairing thread just started on this issue, with a poster speculating that the voter turnout could go as low as 40%.

But are we being overly pessimistic?

In the aftermath of the 2002 general election, the CSO carried out as part of the Quarterly Household Survey a module on voter participation. The main item picked up form this part of the survey related to youth voter participation and that structural issues rather than apathy were the main barriers to young people voting in elections.

However, in the context of the recent controversies regarding the accuracy or otherwise of the electoral register, the survey also had another interesting statistic. It extrapolates from its sample (39,000 households) that 75.5% of the overall population voted as against a national voter turnout as per the electoral register of 62%.

Now the CSO does provide an explanation for this over-estimation;

Overall, 75.5% of respondents indicated that they voted in the election compared with an actualturnout rate of 62%. This overstatement of voter participation, which is usual in surveys of this type, reflects the likelihood of a lower turnout amongst non-respondents to the survey and also possible reluctance amongst some respondents to admit that they did not vote. Despite these shortcomings the survey results provide a sound basis for analysing the reasons for not voting and also for contrasting voters and non-voters in respect of their socio-demographic characteristics and attitudes.

This higher turnout is supported by an IMS survey from 2002 which puts turnout in the high eighties(quoted in the above academic paper).

Given the huge and many flaws of the electoral register, it may be worth considering that these figures may be closer to the actual voting patterns of Irish people, and that the turnout is substantially (and has been for quite a while) stronger that we had previously believed. And following on from that, it is possible that Irish democracy is stronger than people had recently bee giving it credit for.

Not so long ago, discussions over the accuracy or otherwise of the electoral register was all the rage. Indeed, a Fianna Fáil survey in Dublin South East found that on the DSE register up to 15,000 people who were dead or had moved on were included, with a further 17,000 residents within the area not included.

With Dublin South East likely to prove a crucial battleground in the forthcoming election, one would presume such a flagrant and well-publicised example of electoral roll discrepancies would seea quick response from the relevant authorities. Amazingly according to an answer given to Cllr. Lucinda Creighton at Monday’s Dublin City Council, there has been no contact from the Department of Environment, Heritage and Local Government “other than normal correspondence in relation to the compilation of the Register of Electors.”

The response of the Minister for this area, Dick Roche, has so far been far from satisfactory. The flaws in the electoral register system have been well-known for a long-time in political circles with the Sunday Tribune sparking off the latest round of inspection of the registers in late 2005. With an election due within the next year, one hopes that Dick Roche will finally go to the effort of doing something pro-active in this area, rather than sit on his hands as would seem to be his current solution to the problem.

With an election due in the coming year, it is essential that there is public confidence in the electoral register.

When is a politician not a politician?

When Colm O’Gorman made his decision to stand for the Progressive Democrats a few weeks back, it was made with great fanfare, and since then he has not been afraid to make his views known on party political issues. A few weeks back he was engaged in typical politico spin and deciption, when he choose to misrepresent Fine Gael’s positions on a variety of issues in the Enniscorthy Guardian (hat tip to Barry Walsh).

But sure that is party politics, and all that one would expect from a PD candidate in the run-up to the general election.

What is suprising is that RTE for whatever reason, seem to believe that Colm O’Gorman is not party political, or at least not overtly. Why else would they have him, and Brian Lenihan on the same panel on Q&A last night, with only one opposition spokesperson?

More curiously, why did they caption him solely as Colm O’Gorman, director of One-in-Four and not Colm O’Gorman, general election candidate for the PDs? And why did RTE not tell Colm that he was there as Director of One-in-Four, and not as a shameless PD hack because that is all that he came across as in his constant bashing of the opposition and Fine Gael in general.

RTE need to up their game. An election is in full swing, yet Q&A is getting drearier and drearier in a lot of people’s books. This kind of muppetry wouldn’t help convince anyone of its value.

For whatever reason Colm O’Gorman choose to be a PD candidate. He is actively campaigning for election at the moment, and is engaged in partisan government politics. He should be treated as such by RTÉ and not given a sheen of independence or neutrality by presenting him as someone who isn’t anymore.

According to breaking news on BBC News’ website:

EU foreign ministers have agreed on a common position to start membership talks with Turkey after Cyprus raised last-minute objections, diplomats say.

The agreement came after crisis talks between the Austrian EU presidency and Cyprus on Sunday night and Monday.

Cyprus wanted the EU to press Turkey to recognise Cyprus - divided since 1974 - and open its ports to Cypriot ships.

Turkey threatened to boycott the meeting of foreign ministers in Luxembourg unless Cyprus gave way.

Excellent news, and hopefully we’ll see rapid progress in this area in the near future.

One question however, why has BBC filed this under Middle East, rather than Europe?

Given that North Korea is ranked as the worst offender when it comes to censorship of the media, one would think they would keep their head down when it comes to censorship elsewhere.

Not a chance.

The delightful propaganda outlet for the North Korean government, the Korean Central News Agency (which because North Korean doesn’t believe in the internet malarkey, is based in Japan) carries the following condemnation of South Korean censorship:

Pyongyang, June 7 (KCNA) — A meeting of Korean journalists at home and abroad held in Tok Islet on May 31 requested the south Korean “government” to lift the cutoff of access to Internet media, according to the U.S. Internet homepage Minjok Thongsin. Read out at the meeting was a “written request to the south Korean government” in the joint name of the Consultative Council of Overseas Korean Mediamen and the south Korean Journalists Association.
A total cutoff of access to Internet sites of overseas Koreans at a time when the 70 million fellow countrymen are craving for reconciliation and cooperation in the June 15 era to achieve the peaceful reunification of the country at an early date is a senseless attitude of the south Korean “government” and an anti-reunification and anti-national act, the written request said.
It asserted that the “government” should lift at an early date the cutoff of access to Internet sites of overseas Koreans practiced from November 2004.
Prior to the meeting, overseas Korean media persons made public a “Declaration of Tok Islet” calling for conducting dynamic information activities to denounce Japan for running amuck with a wild ambition to grab the islet.

Today is the 25th anniversary of the Israeli attack on the Iraqi nuclear reactor at Osirak. The BBC is carrying a number of articles on the Israeli attack, which are particularly interesting given the current Iranian empasse.

From Young Fine Gael’s Website:

It is now over a week since the beginning of a hunger strike of 38 members of the Belarus Malady Front, one of Young Fine Gael’s sister parties in Belarus. The 38 party members have been on hungar strike in apartments and homes across Belarus in an effort to highlight their demands for democracy and an end to the authoritarianism and cronyism of the Belarussian led by President Alexander Lukashenko.

See more from YFG’s website.

Doesn’t seem to have gotten much coverage in the English speaking world, although good coverage is available from this blog on Belarus related issues.

According to today’s Independent the short-term future of the UEN has been secured, as the Law and Justice party have rejected the overtures of the Tories to remain with the UEN. This will come as something as a relief for Fianna Fáil who sit with the UEN in the European parliament, as if the law and Justice party from Poland had left, it would have marked the end of the UEN as a recognised grouping in the parliament, and with it a variety of perks for their members.

It will also be particularly welcome by the likes of Brian Crowley. Fianna Fáil had been casting around for new partners in Europe over the past few years, and had settled on the Liberals (as was evidenced by the high level support called in the fiasco that was the attempt to get Ógra into the Liberal youth grouping, LYMEC). Whilst this makes sense for Fianna Fáil at a national level, giving more prestige and influence to the party in a European setting, it would spell disaster for the likes of Crowley, who would find it difficult to be considered liberal on any issue, never mind rise to a position of power and influence (like he currently has in UEN - co-president) in a Liberal setting.

Note 1: Today’s Telegraph have a piece about the general move by the Conservatives to create a break away group in the European parliament, and the opposition to it within the Tories European delegation.
Note 2: Free Registeration is required for accessing the Independent story.

As part of their continual fundraising effort, the trust fund for Victor Connell have recently launched a a specially commissioned high quality rugby jersey manufactured by RugbyTech and is produced from the same material as
the current Connacht jersey. Victor Connells initials and his number, ‘2′ are embroidered on the sleeve. The jersey costs €65 will all the proceeds going to the fund. For more details on this, and the other fund raising efforts go to www.4victor.com.

Edit to add: JUNE 2006: 4VICTOR RUGBY JERSEYS ARE ON SALE NOW AT ALL ELVERYS STORES IN THE MIDLANDS AND IN THE ELVERYS RUGBY SHOP OFF GRAFTON STREET

Recently there has been much debate on the issue of scrums in rugby, following calls for rules on scrums to be changed. This call came from a doctor with a strong background in the sport having being the honorary club doctor for Nottingham RFC for 30 years, who published a report on the incidence of spinal injuries in rugby compared to other sports in the latest British Medical Journal.

This has sparked off quite a bit of debate on the issue, and in my own case I am not too sure where I sit on the issue. The scrum is what makes rugby different to other games, and also provides a role in the sport for a wider variety of skills than say league offers. On the other hand, spinal injuries and the threat of them, are always somewhere at the back of your mind when a scrum collapses badly.

Today’s Irish Times carries an en eloquent letter on the subject from Bernard Glynn;

Madam - As a “scrum victim” of 12 years, I was interested in the article “Set-piece thinking must be updated” (Sports, May 31st).

As an experienced hooker with 11 years’ experience, I sustained serious spinal injuries in 1994, when I failed to position my head under my opposing hooker’s shoulder. I had successfully positioned my neck in thousands of scrums previously.

I am now a wheelchair user who needs life-long care.

I regret daily not being able to play rugby, walk, run about with my two young girls, drive, dress myself, or dance. Yet I don’t regret and never have for a minute regretted playing in the most aggressive, competitive and tactical (ask Jerry Flannery) position on the field of rugby.

Every sport and pastime has an element of risk and perhaps risk is what fuels a passion for the game. Rugby is a very physical, aggressive sport and without its full contest in the front row, the scrum would be demeaned.

By all means I agree with increasing insurance cover to match the risks, and coaching and monitoring scrums more intensely, but I couldn’t agree with uncontested scrums. The whole idea is a contradiction in terms and it belittles the players numbered 1,2, and 3, who ply their trade in the bear-pit every week. Ask them what they would prefer. “An honest contest,” would be their reply. - Yours, etc,
BRENDAN GLYNN,
Kennel Hill,
Mallow,
Co Cork.

The Young Progressive Democrats have recently put the details of their campaign against Ógra Fianna Fáil membership of LYMEC up on their website, and it makes interesting reading indeed. (For background, see my previous posts here and here). First off, it links to the minutes of the meeting of the LYMEC council, which reveal a number of interesting things. Firstly, Pat Cox is mentioned as being a supporter of Ógra membership of LYMEC, and presumably therefore FF membership of ALDE - As is, more peculiarly, Lord Alderdice. Less interestingly from an Irish perspective, but given the dynamics of the ALDE and the ELDR, Graham Watson the leader of the ALDE is also mentioned as supporter.

The need for FF to find a suitable home in Europe is increasing all the time, as was highlighted by a recent article in the Scotsman. Dealing with Cameron (stupid) move away from the EPP-ED to form a new grouping in the European Parliament, it reports that this new group will comprise a number of the UEN’s current members, in particular Poland’s Law and Justice party. The UEN without Law and Justice and some of its other cranks who are being courted by the Tories, falls below the threshold of 19 MEPs for recognition in the parliament, and with that FF lose its limited influence in the parliament.

Following on from their national teams creditable performances in the Six Nations this year, and the increasingly competitive displays from their Heineken Cup representative (admittedly this mainly means they are losing by less), today’s shock away victory for Parma over the Dragon marked another step forward for Italian rugby.

The play-off between the best placed of the non-qualifying Heineken Cup teams from the Celtic League, and the third placed Italian team had generally been seen as a gimme for the Celtic Leaguers. However, this result has shown that Italian rugby is not entirely top-heavy with their second rank teams becoming increasingly competitive at a European level, as was seen by Connacht recently in Scilly.

Earlier this year, John Kirwan expressed concerns that the increasing number of Italian exports to the England and France would undermine the competitiveness of the domestic game. Hopefully, this isn’t just a flash in the pan, but marks progress for Italian teams to compete with the lesser lights of the other leading nations. Indeed, if this is to keep up, the idea of a number of Italian teams competing in the Celtic League will be a serious runner, and not heaped on with derision as occurred last year.

Supposedly there is a mass cross sector protest tomorrow being planned for Leinster House at 1pm to protest at the government’s handling over the Mr A case. Barnados and ISPCC are reputedly behind it.

“Le Roi est mort, vive le Roi!”

Why we should accept the death of the European Constitution, and why this presents an opportunity for Europe’s political youth

Introduction

Europe’s recent past has been dominated by a consistent failure of vision from our political leaders. Whilst there have been notable success in the past few years, principally monetary union and enlargement, these were primarily initiatives established and driven by a previous generation. In comparison, on nearly every major issue that has faced Europe in recent years, Europe’s current leaders have fudged the issues and failed to offer anything close to decisive, never mind the visionary, leadership necessary to drive Europe forward.

It is because of this consistent failure of leadership and vision, that one is forced to look askance at the 2001 Laeken Declaration. The declaration, clearly laid out the three main challenges facing Europe:

“The Union needs to become more democratic, more transparent and more efficient. It also has to resolve three basic challenges: how to bring citizens, and primarily the young, closer to the European design and the European institutions, how to organise politics and the European political area in an enlarged Union and how to develop the Union into a stabilising factor and a model in the new, multi-polar world.”

And more than merely highlighting the challenges facing the Union, it offered a creative means to address those issues; the creation of a convention populated by national politicians, to draft a constitution for our Union. Such a process offered, at least initially, the hope that it would deliver a document which would help define our Union, its ambition, and the relationship between the institution of the Union, member-states and the citizen.
Failings of the Constitutional Treaty

Failings of the Constitutional Treaty

Unfortunately the outcome of that process, the European Constitutional Treaty, had many obvious flaws, none more so than with regards to connecting with the citizens of the Union. The Laeken Declaration called for “the European institutions [to] be brought closer to its citizens” and as originally envisaged the constitution offered the means for this to happen. For the people to have a single text to refer to; outlining what our Union stands for, the rules which govern it, and how it should interact with both its citizens and member-states can only be a positive development in encouraging democratic engagement with our Union. However, the length and complexity of the Constitution prohibited this and rather than help connect the citizen to the Union, only seems to have served to alienate many.

Further to that, with regards to the further two challenges outlined above, the convention and the later Inter-governmental conference, chose the roads of least resistance, preferring to tinker with the systems already in place, rather than offering the decisive changes needed to place the Union on a firm footing for the foreseeable future in both areas.

The scope and detail of the treaty was bound to prevent it from becoming a popular and long-standing document, as even the slightest changes to Europe’s operations in coming years would have required revision of the treaty. Whilst the treaty was, and still is, worth endorsing, offering as it does an improvement on the status-quo, it has clearly not lived up to the aspirations of the Laeken Declaration.

However, just because the current Constitutional Treaty had failed in that regard, does not mean that the aspirations of Laeken must be consigned to history. The challenge is to now accept the decisive defeat of the constitution at the hands of the Dutch and French electorate, and to respond pro-actively to the concerns raised.

Unfortunately in the aftermath of the constitutional defeat, Europe’s leaders have reverted to type. After the referenda defeats last year, a ‘Period of Reflection’ was called for. Yet one year into that period, the best suggestions to emanate from the recent meeting of the Council of Foreign Minister in Vienna, was that all that was needed for the Constitutional Treaty to gain popular acceptance was a simple name change, from Constitution to something less strident!

In spite of this inaction, the need for the European Union to be brought closer to the people is now stronger than it was in 2001. Fresh challenges to Europe have emerged, whilst the challenges to the fore in Laeken are still relevant and pressing. Unfortunately the painful lack of vision from the leaders of our Union, suggest that they are not currently up to the task of bringing Europe’s institutions closer to the people, now or in the foreseeable future.

A Challenge for YEPP

Europe’s challenges cannot wait until our leaders get around to dealing with them. Rather we must push for these changes to occur ourselves, by leading the movement for reform. A model for such leadership is provided for the Geneva Accords. The Geneva Accords were a non-governmental initiative by Geneva Initiative, to bring respected individuals from both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict together to negotiate a ‘model’ agreement. Although the agreement was not implemented, it gained much public support on both sides, and demonstrated at a time of political inaction, that progress was possible.

An organisation like YEPP, in conjunction with other youth political groups, should seek to emulate such an initiative, this time with regards to the European Constitution. Rather than wait indefinitely for Europe’s current leadership to awaken from their cationic slumber, Europe’s youth can and should seize the initiative. This can be done by drawing together a convention, comprising not solely of the political elite, but also people from all aspects of European political and civil society. The purpose of this convention would be to draft a concise, popular Constitution, in line with the challenges presented by the Laeken Declaration.

This convention would clearly set itself limits, which would avoid the mistakes of the Constitutional Treaty. Rather than create a comprehensive document covering the minute of how the European Union operates; this convention would be tasked with creating a broad document, which would aim to encapsulate the values and ambition of the European Union. Coupled with that, it would aim to provide a general frame-work as to how Europe’s institutions should relate to the citizen and member-states. Such a document would aim to be easily understood and readable for Europe’s citizens, not an attempt to condense fifty years of Treaties into one large, dense, complex text.

Such a convention would aim to draft such a document as outlined above, and to present it to European Commission and Parliament within one year. Whilst the scope of such a project is undoubtedly ambitious, it would serve (even if ultimately unsuccessful) to keep the flame alive for true European reform, to remind our political leaders of the task they have abdicated, and to show that a constitution which genuinely engages with the people is possible.

(This is the text of an article submitted for YEPP’s forthcoming First Debate-Book)

In its early days, I was a fairly strong contributor to politics.ie wiki. However, in the past six months, I have completely stopped contributing. Pointless petty rows like this, over the use of a graphic for power-sharing bodies in the North illustrate the huge problems with the wiki.

In my own view, the use of this image to denote powersharing is not entirely appropriate, as it implies joint sovereignity more than anything else.

Back in November 2005, the National Forum on Europe called for submissions from interested organisations and members of the public. In response, over forty submissions were received, of which twenty-six are available on the NFE’s website. Over the next few weeks, I hope to comment on some of these submissions, the first of which is the Christian Solidarity Party’s .

The CSP is an interesting organisation, although lacking in any real form of political influence, an examination of its submission provides a useful insight into the way in which many of this countries more reactionary and conservative Catholics view the European Union. Whilst not out rightly hostile to the European Union and the Constitution, their submission is dominated by a suspicion and fear of the Union and its member-states. Indeed this is explicitly stated early in their submission when they “All CSP members view the European Union, and, indeed, the great enthusiasm of the governing elites of Ireland for the EU, with some suspicion”.

This suspicion is based on a number of pillars. One aspect of this is the so-called “Culture of Death” argument, and whilst they don’t seem to argue that this has hugely influenced Irish life as of yet, they see it as prevalent in many of the European Union’s member-state’s, highlighting the legality of abortion in many EU state’s. They see abortion as being at the “back of the Population Implosion in Europe”, and highlight a number of statistics in favour of this;

A quick survey reveals countries such as Germany (which aborts 1 in 3; will see its population plummet from 80 million to 40 million), France (1 in 4; its replacement population is going to be the dreaded “immigrants” - who are born in France), Scotland (slays 1 out of 2) and Nederland’s - whose stats do not include ‘early’ abortions, but whose government funded an abortion ship which reached Dublin.

Whilst highlighting this, and possibly pursing a valid line of enquiry, they fail to attempt to demonstrate how engagement in Europe furthers such a culture in Irish life. Do they see such a culture existing here already, or is the EU the vanguard of its introduction into Irish society. The abortion aspect of the submission, will touch a cord with many of Ireland’s more reactionary Catholics, the individuals who backed and supported Dana in the European Parliament. Unfortunately, it is alarmist and disingenuous, as they have consistently failed to highlight the link between Europe and the possible legalisation of abortion in this state.

Further to this “Culture of Death”, other criticisms of the Union relate to the Democratic Deficit, with the usual arguments in this regard, but also with direct reference to Ireland highlight the introduction of the Morning After pill here, as well as the principle of consent, as further examples of this deficit. Usually the Democratic Deficit in the EU is counter-pointed to local or national democracy, in their submission the CSP seem to despair of true participative democracy at any level.

The not only see a democratic deficit, but they also see in the European Union a “bureaucratic dictatorship”, believing that the majority of EU member state’s are in some-way susceptible to dictatorship:

The ‘Big 3’ - France, Germany and Italy - all choose Dictatorship over democracy; France has done so as late as de Gaulle’s 1960’s! In all of the Iron Curtain countries, there have been dictators recently, and, not so long ago, in the Iberian Peninsula. Even in Greece - the birthplace of democracy – yet another (fascist) dictatorship. Only in Northwest Europe has it neither been chosen to, nor let, hold sway.

Unfortunately, they choose not to develop this thesis, and look at the role of Catholic teaching and democracy. They highlight the Northwest of Europe as the bulwark of democracy on our cotintent, yet fail to expand on an obvious inference.

The make a valid point with regards to the “bureaucratic dictatorship” however, when they refer to it as a system” whereby unelected functionaries make, or seem to make,” the decisions. Unelected functionaries don’t make the decisions, but that to the vast majority of Europe’s citizen’s they “seem to”. To rectify this perception, and give Europe’s people a true sense of participation in the Union’s decision making process is undoubtedly one of Europe’s greatest challenges.

The other theme of the submission worth referring is that of Solidarity, the most commendable aspect of the submission. Solidarity is a key feature of Christian Democracy, and the CSP rightly exposes much of the hollowness of the proclaimed solidarity in European politics:

. As a moral virtue, it is not a matter of feeling some vague compassion or shallow distress at the misfortunes so many peoples both near and far; and that is what the EU seems to make of it when it confines solidarity to member states that are victims of terrorist attack or natural or man-made disasters. We believe Solidarity is a firm and persevering determination to commit oneself to the Common Good

The CSP’s submission concludes on a hopefully note, one in which many people although disagreeing with the content of the report, could share in

“We, in the CSP, believe our EU could be so much the better if only it would recover the vision of its profoundly Christian founders ”

Politics.ie has just reached its 250,000 contribution - Congratulations to Dave Cochrane on creating a vibrant, busy and occasionally informative and challenging internet forum. Long may it continue, improve and grow.

Am just back from the Fine Gael convention for Meath East, which has thrown down the gauntlet to sitting Fianna Fáil TD Mary Wallace, by selecting Ratoath resident Regina Doherty as the second candidate to run alongside Shane McEntee in the forthcoming election. Regina, a mother of three in her mid-thirties is a successful business woman in the IT industry, and has moved like many of Ratoath’s residents to the county in the past number of years.

By selecting a candidate Regina, Fine Gael have provided geographic balance to the ticket. Further to that, gender and background balance has also been provided, with Regina being from the same commuter belt background as the vast majority of the new residents of East Meath.

Meath East is promising to be one of the bell-weather constituencies in the forthcoming election, with one extra seat definitely up for grabs (with the constituency re-draw, Meath East has three seats, but only two outgoing TDs - Shane McEntee from the north of the county, and Mary Wallace). With the field now more or less complete with its main players, things should get interesting very, very soon.

Hopefully Regina will be the candidate who will help take two seats for Fine Gael in Meath East. It is undoubtedly an up-hill task, but FG have selected a candidate who has proven her mettle in the business world, has real experience of the problems of commutters and parents in the county, and is affable and intelligent. If anyone can get the second seat for FG here, it will be Regina.

One of the things we hope to be doing in Young Fine Gael over the coming months, is to make policy submissions to many of the various government agencies, departments and Oireachtas Committees developing policies and legislation on issues that affect and interest our members. In this regard, we recently made a presentation at the Submissions Day to the National Forum on Europe on the challenges facing Europe post the constitutional referenda defeats, as well as making a submission to the Department of Justice’s Working Group on Domestic Partnership.

For an organisation like Young Fine Gael, there is little point going to the effort of debating and eventually agreeing policies, without inputting them into the larger public and policy arena.

Further to my earlier entry, the latest edition of the Phoenix (May 5th) covers the travails of Ógra Fianna Fáil’s in Europe. Under the headline “PDs Block FF in Europe”, the article paints an interesting picture of FF’s response to the Young Progressive Democrats successful rearguard action against the Ógra advance. Particularly interesting is the response of Fianna Fail in Dublin to the whole debacle:

“FF in Dublin regarded the attempt to link up with young Euro liberals - with the ultimate prize being membership of ALDE in the European parliament - as important. So much so that in the middle of the row, which went on for several days, Mount Street functionary, full time youth officer Aidan O’Gorman, arrived at the PD office in South Frederick Street to complain about the YPDs’ blackening if Fife’s good name in Europe. O’Gorman was met with a shrug of the shoulders by PD officers and when the YPDS later reported back to HQ on their day’s work, there was not a hint of recriminations from their elders.”

Link to another thread on this on politics.ie

After many long year of neglect, particularly by their southern hemisphere neighbours, the IRB have take a major positive step for rugby in the Pacific Islands with the Pacific 5 Nations Cup. This competition, which will kick off nexst month will bring together the Tonga, Samoa, Fiji, Japan and the Junior All-Blacks (their A-team). This competition will hopefully expose the Pacific Islanders and Japanese to a level of a good standard of international rugby. On the back of the recent Pacific Cup, which brings together club teams from the Pacific Islands, hopefully we will see soon see a renaissance for those countries at the top tier of international rugby.

European politics generally does not excite much interest in the Irish media, which would explain why this interesting story has been largely ignored. Beyond mention on two threads on the politics.ie (here and here), the story of Ogra Fianna Fail’s attempts to join the European Liberal Youth has been ignored by all and sundry. And possibly you would be right to ignore this issue, were it not for the fact that this was a substanial defeat for Fianna Fail plans for European involvment outside of the realm of the UEN.

Generally dismissed as an insignificant group of crack-pots and “reformed” fascists, the future of the UEN has been the source of much disucssion over the past couple of months, with Fianna Fail quite eager to enter one of the larger European political groupings or parties, mainly the ALDE, the liberal grouping whose main constituent party is the ELDR. Back in 2004, the Business Post was running stories about the desire of FF HQ to leave the UEN, and that being stymied by their MEPs (principally Brian Crowley) desire to remain the big fish in the UEN, rather than small fish in any other pond (1,2, 3,4).

It would seem that FF HQ have changed their tack in the past year, and rather than force the issue on their MEPs, they have decided to use their youth wing, Ogra Fianna Fail (OFF) as the storm troopers in this regards. The intention would seem to be to get OFF involved in the youth wing of the Liberals, and instituionalise a link with the ELDR (the senior wing of the Liberal Youth). Whilst most people would scorn the idea of FF being a liberal party, they currently members of the Liberal grouping (the ALDE) in the Council of Europe, and the ELDR would be delighted to have a party whose leader is a Prime Minister amongst their rannks. Equally, Fianna Fail would have their prestige and influence in the European Parliament greatly improved by such a move, although the ELDR’s views on abortion and women’s rights amongst other issues would make it difficult for someone like Crowley to rise to the top, as he has done in the UEN.

It would seem that this measure to get OFF into LYMEC was supported by some of the top guns in both the ELDR and the European grouping which the ELDR and the ALDE. This was evidenced by the presence of the LYMEC President at the recent OFF National Conference in Ennis, where the LYMEC delegation met with Bertie Ahern. While OFF would claim that the didn’t have intentions on membership, and that they were just looking to get involved in international organisations, this was very much a substanial step towards LYMEC membership for OFF, who until now have not been members, or even involved in any of the European youth political movements.

Things were all well and rosy at this stage, until the Irish members of LYMEC (the Young PDs) began to kick up a fuss, and FF HQ’s plan were torn to shreds. With the support of the leadership of the ELDR and the ALDE, as well as that of the LYMEC President, it would appear that the objections of the Young PDs to the possible arrival of their coalition partners to LYMEC were pushed to one side.

But unfortunately for the best laid plans of the ELDR and FF, the YPDs organised a very successful fight back against this encorachment, and a number of weeks ago the LYMEC Congress passed a resolution (despite the opposition of the LYMEC board, and the OFF head ebing in attendance) declaring that FF were unsuitable for membership of the ELDR, and effectively marking a death nail in the membership process for OFF of LYMEC.

So with this possible avenue towards eventual membership of the ELDR blocked off, where next for Ogra and FF? Twice they have now been stopped in their attempts to integerate into the Liberal block, once by their own MEPs, the second time by the membership of LYMEC. Will they try and make it third time lucky, possibly by associating themselves with the Liberal grouping in the parliament, the ALDE by joining the European Democratic Party, which is the other, smaller, half of the ALDE with the ELDR. Or maybe they’ll continue to wander in Europe’s wilderness.

One thing is for certain, the Young PDs definitely pulled off a coup in stopping FF’s march to the liberals.

With the election approaching, we can be guaranteed that over the coming twelve months we will be subjected to a few patronising and clichéd articles on young people’s supposed disinterest in politics, voting and implicitly in decision-making in society. Whilst there is obviously plenty of truth in this, the condescension offered in these articles will rarely offer any meaningful analysis, never mind possible solutions to the commonly believed problem.

As a youth political party, YFG has a particular duty to work in this area, not just to garner extra votes for Fine Gael, but also for the broader and far more important duty to involve as many citizens as possible in the democratic process as possible. In the past we have mainly looked at this from the perspective of getting people registered and voting, which is probably the most important aspect of this process.

But we must not confine our vision to this, and in tandem must take a much broader view and work towards getting young people involved at all levels of decision making that affects their lives. This in my view is what true democratic participation is all about, and it is an area in which YFG can, must and should offer leadership.

One particular area, which is of direct relevance to every young person at some stage in their life, is in the education system. Secondary school should not just be used to educate young people about the process, but to actively involve them in the decision making that affects their lives on a daily basis.

In 1998, the Education Act dealt tentatively with the issue of student councils in second level schools. While this was a welcome initiative and has provided a basis for progress in the area of student participation in their schools, the Education Act need radical updating and YFG should take the led in this area.

Principally we should be looking to reform the manner in which student councils are created, elected, what they do, how they do it, and what their role is. The education of young people in politics, in elections and decision making is far more effective, when they are elected to bodies that matter, which have power and can do things. For too long a charade of student participation has been allowed to exist, whereby student councils have existed with relatively little powers beyond imagination of some of their more egomaniacally members. As long as the impact, function and powers of these bodies are entirely at the discretion of the teaching staff, these student councils are worthless, whether they be elected or selected. Only by empowering student councils with a real role in the education process, can these bodies be given a value by students.

By amending the Education Act in four principle ways, students can be actively involved in decision making in their schools at second level, and get an important education in the value, power and role of politics in their lives:

o The Education Act should be amended to make student councils compulsory in all second-level schools.
o That all student councils should be directly and democratically elected by all their students.
o That student councils be given a defined role in the day to day running of their schools, for example, by being given by the direction of the Minister of Education, at least one place on the board of management of all publicly funded post-primary schools.
o That the Vocational Education Act be amended so that each Vocational Education Committee include two student members, elected on an annual basis by the student councils within the area to represent the interests of students on the VEC.

These reforms will help radically change the education system, making it more responsive and reflective of the needs of the young people within the system. But they will also help educate young people in politics that directly impacts on their lives, and show the value of engagement within the democratic system. By pushing for genuine student involvement in the decision making process, we will help create a generation of people who have real knowledge and experience of the possibilities of politics, and will be in a greater position to contribute to society as a result.

The education system is just one area, albeit a hugely important one, where democratic participation can be radically increased and democracy as a result strengthen and enhanced for citizens. Other areas of public life can be similarly reform and help to strengthened Irish life against the traps of popular apathy, political isolation and extremism. YFG can offer radical leadership in this area, and through this help radically improve the standard of Irish democracy. A definite challenge presents itself to us. Will we accept it?

This article has been submitted to Young Fine Gael’s Informer magazine for publication in that.

Welcome to my new blog, Semper Idem at blogs.ie.

Over the coming days, weeks and months, I hope to post my views on a wide range of topics, relating to Irish and international politics, history, culture and rugby.

Just a bit on myself firstly, my name is John Carroll, and poltiically I am actively involved in Fine Gael, particularly Young Fine Gael. I am a recent graduate of Trinity College Dublin, where I studied Single Honours History, focusing mainly on Medieval Ireland, and am currently working in the financial sector. In addition to that, I play rugby with the excellent Ashbourne Rugby Club.

Back in the day, I had a blog on Politics.ie (where I post under the name jjcarroll), but that service never caught on, and all my posts there were subsequently lost. So one year on, this is my attempt to get blogging again!