Who would be the anti-life/anti-choice candidate?

// March 28th, 2011 // 3 Comments » // GE11, nui seanad 2011

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A number of those contesting the Seanad panels have highlighted the issue of stem cell research and ethics as a roundabout way to get to the much thornier issue of abortion and to signal to an audience their pro-life or pro-choice credentials. I believe that in due course we will no longer need to use embryonic stem cells for research with adults cells serving just the same purpose to good effect, however until such a time comes around I support the conduct of research using embryonic stem cells. And I would support legislation to clarify the place of such research in the Irish context.

Now I will proceed to the core issue. One of the biggest weaknesses of those arguing both for and against the legalisation of abortion over the past 30 years in Ireland is that they’ve never quite come to terms with the fact that the problem we are dealing with isn’t abortion at all. The problem is that there are pregnancies that aren’t planned or wanted. If all pregnancies were planned and wanted then we’d have no need for abortion at all.

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Campaign oddities.

// March 26th, 2011 // No Comments » // GE11, nui seanad 2011

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We often hear a lot of complaints about spam at election time but it is odd that inside places like the Law Library and in teaching staff rooms  they would be so unconcerned when mass mailed on behalf of perennial candidates. Surely those privy to their colleagues email address should treat them with a bit more respect. But I guess that is why this is seen by the outer 95% as so much of a insider’s election.

The audience drop ins are becoming more and more of a feature in this election, we’ve had people appearing in the crowd at rugby internationals, the selected, the anointed and the disappointing popping up on Vincent Browne and now apparently being in the audience in the Late Late is a platform to ask probing questions of the host. I should really sort out that foursquare thingy and start telling people what street I am on, where I’ve had a pint this weekend and where I went to mass.

And that front page ad in the Irish Examiner has really set the proverbial cat amongst the pigeons. We’ve now got ads on the back pages of national papers, in the personal ads and scrawled on toilet doors.

The NUI appear very put out by the notion that the state of the register is any reflection on them. I’m not sure that we can really pin this one on Seanie Fitz and Denis O’Brien to be honest. If it’s their responsibility to maintain the register and the register is a mess then we can’t blame it on the usual suspects or the boogie.

A couple of us candidates are coming clean and admitting to our donations and spending long before SIPO, cos you don’t have to wait and do the legal minimum to have ethics. I would hope that more might think about doing so by Monday. Let’s get the silent money out in the open!

And yes Fine Gael have mentioned to members that 3 of the candidates are members of the party. I would hope this isn’t a surprise to you but I am one of them. Naturally I am asking that people start at the bottom of the ballot and go from there. In future elections, I will have to ensure that my spouse, should I have one, works hard to get other people elected cos that’s what really counts in deciding on who to support I guess.

Where is the money coming from?

// March 24th, 2011 // No Comments » // GE11, nui seanad 2011

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In the light of the purchase a front page ad on a national newspaper and the €32,030 in declared donations (that is simply those donations that were of an amount that they legally had to be declared) that Senator Ronan Mullen was able to secure to fight the last Seanad election in 2007 combined with the history of donations from financial insitutions and sectoral interests such as trade unions, I’m calling for an immediate full disclosure of donations and campaign spending by NUI/TCD Seanad candidates.

I am calling on all Seanad candidates for the NUI/TCD seats to declare by next Monday what their donations received or pledged are to date and thereafter accept no more donations. And I would ask that they should also publish at the same time what they have spent to date and what they expect to spend over the course of the campaign. The public should not have to wait until the declarations to SIPO next year to find out just how much and from whom candidates had received donations. There are no spending limits for the Seanad elections and there is a serious danger that a changed Oireacthas might become the preserve of the wealth and well connected. Only by being completely open and transparent can we even start restore politics in the eyes of the public.

Thus far Peter Mooney and Dr. Mick Molloy have come forward to declare their donations or lack of them, and I hope and indeed expect others will over the course of the day.

Doing right by the Next Generation

// March 21st, 2011 // No Comments » // GE11, nui seanad 2011

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All too often the default position of our society to young people is to regard them as a problem and burden. We view younger people so much as a problem about which ‘something must be done’, that one would think none of us had ever been young ourselves.

At times it seems like none of us as adults appears to remember times when we had strayed too close to going off the rails, or done things that perhaps we shouldn’t have. In the media, the word “youth” is most often heard proceeded with the definite article followed by the words charged, detained or arrested. Too many children in Ireland are not in a position to avail of the educational opportunities afforded to them, due in large part to a history of disadvantage that spans the generations. We, as a society, must raise both our own expectations of our young people and their expectations of themselves; we need to stop seeing them as a problems and starting seeing them as we once were. Often ignored, under-appreciated, bored and lacking a challenge.

We need to provide accessible low cost venues in which young people can feel safe to simply hang with simple passive adult supervision, far too often the few places that young people have to meet in are available only at a prohibitive cost. Anyone who has travelled beyond these shores will have experienced the greater resources devoted to challenging their young people and which occupy their time, it is almost as if we as a nation had so long gotten used to have so many young people that it matter not what would happen to them.

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The electoral disaster that is the NUI register

// March 21st, 2011 // No Comments » // nui seanad 2011

2007 NUI Seanad candidate Daniel Sullivan has called for an investigation by the Minister for the Environment into the running of the election of the Seanad for the 3^rd level seats. The NUI is evidently completely overtaxed with this responsibility of running an Oireachtas election and especially at the time when it was under the threat of abolition itself.

The NUI has been operating an automatic registration process for its own internal Senate elections In marked contrast to how the NUI Seanad register for the Oireachtas elections is maintained. The NUI convocation registration process is automatic while the Oireachtas panel register requires additional steps, this despite the NUI constituent colleges being aware of who is and is not an Irish citizen in order to charge the appropriate level of fees. Despite being in possession of all the relevant information to ensure that the Seanad register is correct, the NUI hasn’t acted to the necessary standard one would expect from a public body running an Oireachtas election. So the reported failure to ensure that over an estimated 100,000 citizens could vote for the Seanad is entirely down to inaction by the NUI. The NUI is required under statute to render “an accurate register, so far as may be practicable,” and it is very hard to understand why it is not taking these practicable steps of using the information it has its gathered and which is available to it.

It is also curious that a member of individuals including the Chair of the Convocation committee Linda O’Shea-Farren, BCL and Dr Mary O’Riordan, MB BCh BAO, DCH, FPC, MPH, and Bernadine O’Sullivan, BA, HDip in Ed are members of NUI own internal Senate. They have stood on several occasions as NUI candidates and all would be very aware of the issues of concern surrounding the maintenance of the register. Yet their tenure has seen the register remain as rotten a borough as ever.

The size of the NUI register has actually shrunk over the last 4 years. The 2006 register had an electorate of 98,839 while the 2010 version has only 97,727 including two dozen who graduated prior to the founding of the Free State. Meanwhile, only 4749 new graduates for the whole of the 5 years 2006-2010 have been added to the 2010 register which the forthcoming election is likely to be based on. This when more than twice that number would be graduating in a single year from NUI colleges represents an abject failure of the NUI as an institution to execute the duty it has been charged with by the Oireachtas. UCD alone would graduate more than 3,000 people each year so the fact that the peak graduation year for NUI voters is almost two decades ago in the early 90s is very worrying.

The potential exists that access to the internal convocation register could provide them with a more accurate private version of the register for electoral purposes. Someone with this access could cross reference the NUI Convocation Senate register with the NUI Seanad register. Is someone was to make use this insider information for canvassing purposes the appearance of operating a closed shop is hard to avoid. NUI Convocation’s funding coming to it from the NUI itself which is supported by public funds should avoid being open to being a vehicle for insiders.

I believe that the Minister for the Environment needs to step in immediately and remove responsibility from the NUI for running this election especially given the sword of Damocles that is hanging over it from the Minister for Education’s existing proposals for its own abolition. It is time for the Department of the Environment to take action immediately and ensure this Seanad election, if it is to be the last one is conducted properly and fairly. He should also act to finally extend the franchise to those provided for in the 1979 Seventh Amendment to the Constitution.

Years of graduation from the 2006 NUI Register

Years of graduation from the 2010 NUI Register

Details of the NUI convocation

http://www.nui.ie/about/structure.asp

“Convocation Register

In accordance with the provisions of the University Statutes, the NUI is obliged to maintain a register of all graduates of the university – the Convocation Register. As all graduates are automatically registered, there is no special registration procedure.

http://www.nuiconvocation.ie/ab_effect.html”

The time scale required to update this register from Feb to June with only a thousand or so additions per year is farcical. Four months to make only minor changes. It is beyond understanding that the register with which the NUI has been charged by the state with maintaining has failed to be updated, either accurately, consistently or fairly.

The NUI could immediately cross reference their register with the copies of the convocation register for greater accuracy and completeness. With a budget of several million Euros per year allocated to the NUI and with this one of few active functions that it retains, one would have expected that the NUI would seek to discharge its duty as the organiser of an Oireachtas election as faithfully as possible yet each year thousands more NUI graduates are let down by the ongoing failure to perform the simple task of add them to the NUI Seanad register while their addition to the NUI’s internal convocation register is automatic.

When so many our more recent graduates will be making up the new Diaspora the failure to ensure they have their right to participate in the election is all the more marked. The deadline for the 2011 register is Feb 26^th but not one the new graduates will be able to vote as the register only comes into effect in June after the upcoming elections is expected to have completed. There is no provision for any form of supplementary register. Couple this with the failure of the government to legislate to extend the franchise as provided for in 1979 means that at a time when the CSO estimates the number of 3^rd level degree holders in Ireland as close to 400,000 people. The missed opportunity to have almost 15% of the electorate electing 10% of the Seanad and representing a chance to give people a voice that is not tied to the parish pump is stark.

http://www.irishstatutebook.ie/1937/en/act/pub/0030/sec0009.html#zza30y1937s9

Seanad Electoral (University Members) Act, 1937

9 – (3)

(3) Every annual revision, in pursuance of this section, of a register of electors shall be completed before and shall come into effect on the 1st day of June and shall be so made as to render such register of electors an accurate register, so far as may be practicable, of the persons who were qualified on the next preceding 15th day of November to be registered in such register of electors.

Campaign Costs and Finances

// March 21st, 2011 // No Comments » // GE11, nui seanad 2011

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The cost of this Seanad campaign is primarily made up of the Litir Um ThoghChán which came in at €1304 inclusive of VAT.

The Website is a hack by myself of a free template from Free Web Templates.

There is some mild mannered advertising on Google Adwords and Facebook but I have limited the overall potential maximum spending to the price of a couple of Xbox 360 games. Pre-owned games that is.

And the finances are entirely coming from a loan advanced by the International Consolidated Bank of MiBakPokkitt. They’re lovely people, very understanding but they operate to a very exclusive clientèle.

ECF (Exceptional Control Freakiery)

// March 19th, 2011 // No Comments » // GE11, nui seanad 2011

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For a time I had a manager in company I once worked with who used to collect weekly reports from their team members, and who also micro managed their time to within an inch of their lives. It was later discovered that said manager was culling those weekly reports to provide weekly report to their own manager and that they were depicting some items as being their work rather than the work of their team members.

The detail of the Employment Control Framework (ECF) (from what I’ve been able to discern from it) appears to be derived from a similar mentality that has been all too pervasive in Irish public life for much too long. Certainly it is too often the case that many elements of the Irish public sector have been too cosset-teed and protected from taking the consequences of their mistakes. Yet to respond to that problem by removing almost all autonomy in who you can hire as the newest  implementation of the ECF has done is to head in entirely the wrong direction. What we should aim for is to let all 3rd level institutions have the freedom to try new things and to live with the consequences of failure instead of infantile nannishness that would prevent them from hiring people even when they are going to be paid by some 3rd party from industry unless the HEA signs off on each individual hire. Excessive control from above is no way to foster a culture of innovation and adventure. Of course given the nature of 3rd level research employment, which I was up to recently a part of, the people who will effected by this are the very people that we are asking to power the knowledge economy, it won’t be the administrators or the members of the permanent university infrastructure that will be most affected. It will be those who are transitioning from being post-graduates to post Docs who may have during the course of their research work generated some new idea or finding that might yield a new product or service. However, the perspective of the HEA appears to be that we should avoid having them work within the context of a bridge between industry and academia, better that they leave the Irish academic environment altogether even if this means they leave the country taking the prospect of developing that research into something concrete with them. Again this is the same public service that was deducting pension levies from people on short term contracts that they would not ever be able to avail of.

So let’s get the ECF off the backs of the colleges and let’s instead start to expect more of them. The reality is that this approach as manifested in the ECF flies full in the face of SFI’s intention to encourage and make more productive the links between industry and 3rd level academic research. It’s like having a sports coach that demands you are quicker off the line in the sprint but then ties your shoe laces together and acts the maggot with the starting gun.

The more Machiavellian part of my brain has to wonder where lies the true provenance of this framework, and what was its real intention? Did any of it originate with the highly resentful and petty minded attitude we saw from the previous minister for Education?

Endorsements and Nominators

// March 17th, 2011 // No Comments » // GE11, nui seanad 2011

I’m very appreciative of the people who have supported my candidacy by signing my nomination form shown below and those who have provided some words of endorsement.

Endorsements

Killian Forde - “I’ve known Daniel for a number of years and based on his passion for ideas, knowledge of politics and interest in policy I think he would be a welcome addition to the Seanad. The upper house should be an arena to express and introduce new approaches that could solve Ireland’s chronic problems; Daniel’s a really bright guy with little tolerance for lazy conventional wisdom and I wish him all best in his election.”

Jason O’Mahony – “Daniel Sullivan is a thoughtful contributor to the ideas side of Irish Politics. Despite his FG leanings, he’s not a tribal guy, and is always interested in the “Why?” side of a proposal as opposed to the “Whose idea was it?” side. For that reason alone, I think Daniel Sullivan would be an excellent addition to Seanad Éireann.”

Dr. Bill Tormey – “There are a few excellent people challenging on the NUI panel for a Seanad seat. As an iconoclastic individual, I value people who have a robust independence and fairness of mind. Daniel Sullivan has these qualities and if you read his blog those characteristics will become apparent quickly. As a voter, I have no hesitation in recommending him for election. “

John Paul Phelan TD “Daniel K. Sullivan is exactly the kind of member Seanad Eireann needs, thoughtful, rational and with a keen interest in Public Affairs, I recommend him to the NUI electorate for a Number 1 Vote.

Diarmiud Scully 2005-2006 Mayor of Limerick “I have no hesitation in supporting the Seanad campaign of Dan Sullivan.  Dan is a tireless worker who has been at the forefront of the battle to preserve Limerick’s environmental heritage and to ensure that the city and its environs develop in a way that is sustainable and to the benefit of all is citizens.

Recall of the Seanad – a party political rebroadcast on behalf of incumbency

// March 16th, 2011 // 1 Comment » // GE11

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I was rather stunned to read today that the Seanad is being recalled on foot of a motion put down by Senator Joe O’ Toole who is not seeking re-election. At a time when FF appear caught up in open civil war between the old guard and the relief cavalry unit commanded by Michael Martin the move appears more designed to afford sitting senators a platform that no one else contesting the election can match just at the point at which the electorate made up of cllrs and a minority portion of the states 3rd level graduates will be making up their minds about casting their votes.

I also happen to think that any coverage of its sitting might be in breach of the current legislative framework in regard to broadcasting time allocated during election campaigns, which I suspect was not in place the last time the Seanad was recalled in 1981. So we could end up with a sitting of a house of the Oireachtas which can’t be mentioned on the national airwaves, and what purpose will that serve?

During regular polling for the Dáil a news moratorium is observed, which I entirely accept would be wholly impractical to ask for given that polling for the 3rd level seats takes place over several weeks. Yet the least we could expect, in keeping with the spirit of allowing the voters some space and quiet reflection to get on with making their minds up, is that outgoing Senators would not be afforded the chance for political theatrics on the national airwaves and attention seeking grandstanding that no one else contesting the election is able to match. Is it just possible that the sitting senators are running scared of an electorate that is in the mood for revolution?

This recall comes on top of the ridiculous farce of Oireachtas postage being used by sitting Senators during the course of the campaign, of €100,000 of tax payers’ money being used for the mail out of individual leaflets instead of a single booklet containing a small reference to each candidate with the position in said booklet to be allocated by a public random draw.

I would agree that the piece of legislation that this recall is supposed to be about – that of ensuring that involuntary electric shock treatment for psychiatric patients is banned – is a worthwhile one but I can detect no sign that the incoming government was not going to revisit this at an early date. So the main purpose of the recall it seems to me is to afford sitting senators a chance to talk at length about the new program for government. In other words a taxpayer funded election broadcast to be chaired by the representatives of the previous administration while people are casting their ballots. We will even have the bizarre situation of Senators who were appointed by previous FF Taoisigh and who are now contesting the TCD and NUI panels speaking as never before.

More than anything else this recall does not show, as Senator O’Toole says it would that “the recall was to act as a reminder of why Seanad Éireann was there.” instead it shows why many people think it should done away with. If this is a stunt, then it is a pretty uncunning stunt in that it achieves exactly the opposite of what it is intended to achieve. It makes the Seanad look like an institution that is out of touch with the general population and undermines its legitimacy even more as if that were possible after the behaviour of of Senator Ivor Callely or Brian Cowen’s rush to appoint Daragh O’Brien to the Seanad when he had left other vacancies exist for months on end. That an intelligent man like Sen. Joe O’Toole would so misread how this will be perceived by the public shows just how isolating and deluding an environment it is.

If I didn’t know better I’d have suspected Phil Hogan was behind it all….hang on.

Supporting All of Our Families

// March 7th, 2011 // 2 Comments » // nui seanad 2011

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We are all members of families in one form or another, formed in a variety of ways. All bound together by their love for one another. A family created by choice, is the smallest unit of community, it is where the real work of community begins. No individual is a community unto themselves. We must as a society recognise and support all of those who wish to make a life-long commitment to one another. That willingness to support another person in bad times is what takes us beyond the base instincts of the perpetuation of our genetic heritage.

In our model of society, much removed from the every man for himself mentality, we have an expectation that we will undertake to support one another in harsh times, even when there is not blood relationship. That is what makes modern society different to the pure tribalism from which it evolved. So the notion that in order for society to given recognition to the commitment to support to one another that a blood line must be potentially involved actually goes against the development of humanity from the time of our tribal origins. Indeed it is very much, in my humble opinion, unChristian too boot. We are asked on a daily basis to transcend the tribal, to pay our taxes to be spent on others, to love our fellow human beings, to extend to them the protections that we would want for one of our own blood.

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