Letter to Madam on quotas

// June 1st, 2011 // No Comments » // letters to Madam

Image by Cornell University Library via Flickr

Madam,

I await with eager anticipation the amendment to the new quota system for candidate selection that imposes a limit on family members of politicians being candidates in elections. There is a significant under representation in the candidate line up at general and local election time of people who are not related by blood or marriage to sitting or previous members of our local authorities or the Oireachtas. This much under represented group who are known at times as ‘the people’ or ‘the electorate’ have much to contribute to political life and surely they must have many insights into what it must be like to live as someone without the ability to whisper in the ear of a minister or to have direct input into party policy by virtue of sharing the dinner table with an Oireachtas member.

Modern party political activity affords the ordinary party member no input to nor oversight of party policy. Members do not vote on party policy, they do not get to contribute to what it is and what it is not. So why would someone unaligned to a sitting representative be inclined join a political party in the first place. These people, or ‘citizens’ are they are sometimes called, find much of what passes for party politics a turnoff with its strong allegiance to whoever is the current big cheese in the local organisation. Change that and we might just find many of those men and more so women who currently decide to remain outside of party politics would be more interested in becoming involved.

Yours etc.

Quotas for Votas

// May 29th, 2011 // No Comments » // GE11

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Even the best of us can fall victim to a piece of boneheaded conventional wisdom from time to time, and the suggestion that political parties must run 30% women candidates in a general election is one of those ideas that once you start to pick it apart in detail tends to fall asunder in your hands.

The notion of quotas as the solution to various problems of under-representation in various bodies or environments is a quite long established one and it is one with considerable merit at the very outset of trying to get a minority or under-represented, or previous excluded groups into an existing system. Yet the way in which certain advocacy groups cleave to quotas long after the actual barriers have come down especially in respect of the under representation of a majority grouping puts me more in mind of the adage about a solution in search of a problem. And God knows there are plenty who are wedded to this solution.

The long standing problem of the under representation of women in the Oireachtas is not the stand alone issue that many would like to paint it as being. Indeed, as women by many counts constitute a majority of the voting population and as voting rights have been equal since the foundation of the state one might be given to wonder why no one has looked for causes other than gender as being the reason for their absence. Just as the wider societal significance of the OJ Simpson trial was that money not race was the bigger determining factor in whether or not you would be convicted of a crime. So too the absence of women from the Oireachtas is no longer primarily about gender.

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Saving the Seanad, not bloody likely

// May 27th, 2011 // No Comments » // GE11, Seanad, seanad eireann, seanad reform

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Once again the nation was treated this week to the sights and sounds of the returning Seanad. Not that most of the population had noticed that it had been away. Various people, most of them senators of long standing, used the occasion and the press attention to give voice to their strongly held view that the Seanad should be retained at all costs and indeed reformed to the benefit of all. Burdocks to that I say.

Let’s be straight with one another, without any concrete proposals being adopted by the Seanad itself to reform I won’t be voting or campaigning to save it as it is currently constituted, all on the promise that it might, one day, far off in the future, after it has had one more custard pie and a nice nap, be reformed in some way.

I stood as a candidate for the Seanad on the NUI panel on the basis that it must be reformed immediately or else abolished. My thoughts were and are that the time has long run out for last chances for this chamber, that it was time for things to be done or to dust with it. I’ve not changed my mind since that election took place. The last (the 12th in total) report from the Seanad itself on its reform was the usual weighty document, full of compromises ironed out amongst the senators themselves with one eye glancing back towards their past and future electorate of local authority members and a minority of 3rd level graduates. Hence the proposal to retain the election of some Senators by local authority members even while the general populous was to elect a portion of the chamber.

And we then saw how commitment to the reforms in that report as within the lifetime of the last Oireachtas various  senators from political parties and also noted independents welching and reneging on their support for even these watery set of reforms. Demanding, demanding no less, that even those small steps that could be enacted by a simple legislative process must not be touched unless the entire chamber was simultaneously reformed. This is beyond getting cats to walk in a line, it’s looking for them to do a synchronised about turn once they are all facing in the same direction.

That steadfast unwillingness to do even the bare minimum is the crux of the argument on any referendum on the abolition of the Seanad for me. I believe that abolition of the Seanad on its own is mere electoral window dressing and would represent a bad decision. Yet voting to keep the Seanad as is, in the forlorn hope that reforms might happen based on non-binding commitments post the referendum, would be a worse decision.

I will continue to poke those people I might chance to have access in the Dáil for the enactment of extensive changes to the Dáil electoral system which should happen simultaneously with the abolition of the Seanad. But I’m not going to make it a ‘do that or else’ demand. I will not campaign to save a chamber that can’t bring itself to present a real package of agreed reforms when faced with its own extinction. And these would have to be detailed reforms that it stand over, and could not and would not revoke. After all, if the members of the Seanad especially those most vocal in its defence can’t even act to pass a simple bill making those straightforward changes that could have been made by legislation then what right have they to demand that others must act save them and the chamber that they have done so much to keep the rest of the population away from. If they are not willing to act to save themselves then why should we bother?

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.

Announcement of candidacy for NUI Seanad

// March 6th, 2011 // No Comments » // GE11, nui seanad 2011, nuim, Seanad, seanad eireann, seanad reform

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I am running once more for Seanad Éireann on the NUI panel, this post will tell you a bit about me and why I’m running*.

I’m an unmarried** 43 year old engineer. I’m a practical person who believes that politics matters most when it is about how we choose to do things, not simply who does them. I’m the son of parents from Kerry who were forced into emigration to England in the 50s and who had to do similar myself in the 90s, going to Japan. I later had the opportunity to choose to work in the US.

My intention is to make  politics work; for all of us, not simply for some of us. Like 95% of the electorate, I cannot vote in this Seanad election. We need your vote. Who would have thought that 4 years on from the 2007 election, where I attempted and, to be frank about it, failed to get some currency for the topic of electoral and political reform that it would now be so much centre stage. Real Political Reform is not an end in itself rather it is a means to an end, to create a society governed more wisely, more compassionately and more competently.

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A gender kink in political reform proposals

// February 9th, 2011 // No Comments » // GE11

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There is a recurring desire expressed to see more sittings of the Oireachtas moving to 4 days or even 5 days in part as a means to facilitate more family hours so that there would be less late sittings.

However, this creates another problem, as these same family friendly hours actually only suit those whose families are close enough for them to see them in the evening, i.e. Dublin based TDs or those within commuting distance as other TDs from further afield are actually away from their families during the week. So either the TDs from outside of Dublin move their children, dogs, cats, spouses to Dublin and have them attend school, chase cats and work there or they leave them at home and they only see them at weekends.

But that’s not family friendly at all and it will be to their electoral disadvantage as moving the family and those the family home to Dublin will leave those TDs open to a challenge from a more locally based candidate and the cycle would begin again. So a solution to a problem that we are told has a great impact on getting women, especially those with young child involved in politics it would seem that the likely effect of moving to more shorter sitting days would be to deny female TDs the longevity needed to become ministers, party leaders or ultimately Taoiseach because they either have to leave their children for longer periods of time or leave themselves more vulnerable to electoral defeat.

Of course, a solution to this might be to question why we need the Dail chamber aspect of being a parliamentarian requires you to be in Dublin at all. Might we start to reconsider the assembly nature of Dail process entirely? After all, it’s not like anyone is in the chamber genuinely listening to what others have to say so why do they need to be so close proximity at all? Would it be more properly family friendly to have a virtual chamber?

Alternatives to lists and quotas to reduce clientelism and offer the electorate more diverse voting options

// December 30th, 2010 // 3 Comments » // 2010, Seanad, seanad eireann, seanad reform

Long form version of a post I have over on Political Reform.

Discussion about political change, and in particular where electoral reform is concerned, tends to start by identifying a problem by examining its symptoms and then seeks to alleviate those same symptoms. Often times through green-field gerrymandering that presupposes we are able to start from scratch at some future election. Such green field efforts aim for defined outcomes rather than simply ensuring the system is correct and allowing the outcomes to be in the hands of the voters. Such new systems and practices as are proposed also tend to ignore any number of real world practicalities. In this piece, I’m going to try to outline two of the problems as I see them in how the electoral system currently functions, coupled with some the practical realities that accompany them, and then suggest two forms of electoral change that would actually address those problems without seeking to ensure some particular outcome. Neither of the suggested systems would perfectly address the core problems I will be addressing but they would do so sufficiently to ensure that we can move on in our discussions to some of the other problems we face.

Two of biggest problems – and from which almost all others stem – are a lack of real diversity being offered to the electorate in our parliamentary and local administrative elections and a surfeit of clientelism. I will start with the latter.

1)      Clientelism

Excessive clientelism across Irish political life is a real problem we have to face up to. However, we need to recognise that clientelism is not simply the result of the PR-STV system but is rather a potentiality that exists in all electoral systems if the electorate are so minded to reward it. Other nations and local governmental units overseas have taken measures to prevent it getting out of control. It is therefore a situation that needs to be controlled and managed, not necessarily eliminated entirely as it originates from the behaviour of the public. In considering what those measures might involve in particular in the context of our local political environment here in Ireland, we need to consider the scale of clientelism and how it works in Ireland. I will confine myself initially with clientelism at the Dail level but the suggested solution outlined later could work with some modifications for local administration elections too.

Clientelism as a major problem manifests itself when it is possible to get elected from simply doing stuff particular to the everyday needs of individual voters or their families (letter writing, form filling, hand holding, funeral attending, and making calls for people) on a purely local level – the direct person to person contact – such that a sufficient number of people will reward you with a vote such that you can be elected on this support base alone. It is, in some senses, a transactional issue; you are buying votes for work done for those specific individuals who will in turn cast their ballots for you. In Irish elections, you are well in the running for a seat in most general elections if you poll over 6,000 first preference votes and are almost guaranteed one if you poll over 8,000. It is actually possible given the nature of Ireland to physically meet that many people and do that many small things and be rewarded by their extended families and communities over the course of the 3/5 year period that occurs between elections. Worse yet, you can be elected with considerably less than that level of support to the local council and with the winning of a council seat becoming more and more a required stepping stone to the Oireachtas (national parliament encompassing both the Dáil and Seanad) then only those who have won at local election level get to be in the running for a Dail  nomination.

What we are presented with is a straight forward problem of scaling; make it sufficiently hard to get in the running for a seat in the Dail simply on clientelism activities alone and you will reduce the impact of clientelism on the governance of the country. Most see the solutions to this as involving some large scale reduction in the numbers of seats so as to ensure higher quotas. This would act as a means to raise the bar sufficiently that you would need too large a number of votes say 20,000 or so or they seek to remove the link between locality and national representation via various list systems. Yet a parliament consisting of only 80 or so members (which is what decreasing the number of seats to increase the quotas to around 20,000 would mean) makes for its own problems in ensuring a deep enough pool from which to draw an executive while leaving enough legislators available. A government of 15/20 members drawn from only 40 or so representatives of the majority party would be a recipe for disaster, almost everyone who had been elected more than once would have to serve in cabinet. Doing less than this by reducing the Dail by much smaller amounts of say only 20 to 30 TDS would do next to nothing to affect clientelism as what is required is to increase the quotas by several orders of magnitude.

List systems of various types  are also suggested as a possible solution to the problem of clientelism but lists too bring with them their own set of new problems. It is unclear just who is going to decide who is on the list, and where they are placed and how people get well enough known nationally to get votes and how exactly that would all be funded. When people say that list systems would be controlled by the political parties it is never made clear who exactly in the parties they mean, the membership, local or national, the party executives, professionals who work for the party, the elected party leadership. People often talk of ‘the political parties’ as if they were sentient entities in their own right which shows up that many of those suggesting we should have national lists controlled by the parties have limited knowledge exactly how political parties operate at the senior level. Because – believe me – it won’t necessarily lead to any broadening of the general diversity of the candidates on offer to have the party hierarchy in charge of who gets on lists and what placement they are given.

So how might we go about requiring that you need considerably more votes than can be delivered through clientelism but not need to dangerously reduce the numbers of parliamentary seats? One solution that would require someone to get considerably more votes to get elected is to have multi-vote overlapping geographical and non-geographically based constituencies. We’re familiar with the concept of panel elections from the Seanad even if they operate on a much too restrictive franchise of local authority members and existing Oireachtas members. The idea is that each voter would have 4 (it could be 3 or 5, I’m not married to 4) votes to cast in 4 overlapping constituencies that would each be electing only a quarter of the number of TD per head as now. However, since there would be 4 of them we’d still end up with the same number of TDs only the quota would be increased by a factor of 4 without incurring the problems associated with having too small a parliament.

So we could have a West of Ireland constituency with 8 seats representing all the counties of the western seaboard with an electorate of 300,000 that also overlaps in places with a Munster constituency that has 10 seats and a 4 seat Southern constituency including part of Kerry, all of Cork and Waterford and a part of Wexford. We could have 3 and 4 seat constituencies for fishing, the Gaeltacht and other non-geographic profession or special interest constituencies based on other criteria. People in Louth could vote in North Leinster, East Leinster and the Border. It would be possible then for the quotas to be three and four times what they are now while retaining roughly same overall number of elected representatives as at present. In such a scenario with non-geographical constituencies (that could be made to dynamically grow as more people chose to exercise their votes for those panels rather than the geographical) we could look to eliminate the Seanad.

With no one being able to get elected just by being the main Killarney candidate or the sole candidate from Dingle, they would have to offer more in the way of a broader policy message for the country and to people spread across such distances that they can’t spend as much time being clientelist agents for. It would not end clientelism forever but it would reduce it considerably.

2)      Diversity and Broadening choice at election time.

There is considerable attention given to the lack of diversity in the Oireachtas which derives entirely from the lack of diversity is offered to the electorate. For many reasons, understandable but misguided, most of the attention is on purely the topic of gender diversity with the occasional nod towards the age profile of the parliament.

The truth is that lack of diversity in representative politics is not simply gender specific but encompasses age, income, educational background, and shocking though it might be for some to consider, political opinion. To focus solely on gender is to miss the core problem which is that it is the voters that cause the political parties to tack to the middle and safe, conservative waters in terms of candidate selection. Our parliament should no more have a minimum target for female or male representation any more than it would have a maximum one.

The question is often asked why don’t political parties run more women, more young people, more people who are gay, more openly ideologically opinionated people both left and right leaning, more people who like mountain biking or Aphex Twin (ok that’s probably just me). Yet the question is often asked more as a rhetorical device to castigate political party X or position Y instead of looking at the reality of why parties don’t run broader slates of candidates.

So why do parties cleave to the mainstream with their tickets? The truth is because they are ruled more by fear than adventure, and because most of them have seats that they can lose as much as they are targeting seats that they can win. Political party organisations as campaigning entities exist in the main to win seats, and winning seats is again about numbers and the behaviour of the electorate. You can design new electoral systems all you want but if the public want to vote a certain way or use the system to get a certain outcome then that is what they will do and that is what they will try to get. In part the problem in Ireland is that winning seats, not alone above all but to the exclusion of all else, has been become the sole objective of the party organisations.

So what is stopping parties running much more diverse slates, why not run 7 candidates in a 5 seater? Fundamentally it is down to transfers, you might think that running as broad a range of candidates would be the best option as it would ensure that everyone in an area has a candidate from a party whose policies they like that and who – on a personal leve – they are also comfortable voting for. With our form of geographically based PR-STV that is not what happens, e.g. the Killorglin FFer leaks votes to the FGer from Killorglin costing FF a 2^nd Kerry South seat that they should have won based on their share of the 1st preference vote. Even FF who used to run as many candidates as there were seats learned in the end that with PR-STV you will lose seats you would have won by running too many candidates as the transfers ebb away over the course of the counts.

Quotas that require a gender divide in candidate slates would be more damaging to those larger parties that might be able to think about win more than one seat in a constituency. They are also wholly unnecessary to achieve the aim of broadening access.  Requiring a party that might typically run 3 candidates in a 5 seater because they can win 2 seats to instead run 4 of which half must be of one gender are being targeted compared to the party that is just in the hunt for just one seat that will simply run their usual main candidate along with a token. It would lead to the smaller parties especially running complete token candidates, I’m sure that Joe Higgins and Clare Daly would find compliant running mates of the required gender whose name might be on the ballot but who won’t campaign worth a damn. And it is a measure that doesn’t apply to independent/non party or single issue candidates at all!

If we were to have quotas at all then it would be more reasonable to require all parties contesting the election to offer a panel of candidates equal to double the number of seats with an equal man/female split in others words to have what would be local lists. Some people will not unreasonably say this will hurt the smaller parties more that are in the running for more one seat in a 4 seater or that it would lead to tokenism. Yet so would the notion that we must run 50/50 tickets, but it is a valid criticism of local lists then it is a valid criticism of unequally weighted gender splits.

The suggestion I would make is that we could take one of the positive facets of a national list and say that the total allocation of parliamentary seats for each party is to be based on the national % of the 1^st preference vote the party secures, provided that some minimal threshold of 3/4/5% is reached. We could then proceed to elect 75/80% of the Dail in the manner we are used to with uniformly sized constituencies of 4 seats. Let’s say we have thirty constituencies of 4 seats each giving us 120 TDs in this manner. Yes they will straddle county boundaries and the like but what of it, the county system as a unit of local administration/governance is past its sale by date but that’s a post for another time. We could even have some portion of those 4 seat constituencies be non-geographically based, incorporating the reforms suggested in the first part of this piece to increase the quotas!

The first major change we will see is that parties will run broader slates as every last 1^st preferences counts for the same in getting their national seat totals! Running that smart female lecturer from Milltown who works in Tralee is no longer a problem even if the sitting male FF TD is based 4 miles away in Killorglin, they can run candidates in every town they want if they like (and if they have the money to do so). Her potential value to the party isn’t reduced as the eliminations take place; and the people still get to decide who is best placed to be elected first. Her extra votes are not progressively discounted by the elimination and transfer stages at the count. So imagine an election where the national vote percentages were FG 30% FF 20% Lab 25% SF 15% Green 5% Others 5% And the result when all the four seats are filled in all the constituencies were 120 – FG 40 FF 25 Lab 31 SF 17 Green 3 Others 2

With 30 to be distributed as mop-ups with the aim is to have a proportionate chamber of 150 the target to be aimed for is

150 seats – FG 46 FF 31 Lab 38 SF 22 Green 10 Others 2

The mop up or top up, overhang is performed by deeming those whose parties had sufficient national support to warrant election for more seats but it is not party hierarchies that are picking insider favourites to fill those slots, it is the people.  Very strong independents could continue to be elected by some areas as at present though there would not be an ‘independent’ list or top up element.

With the first allocations to be made to the smaller parties and a gap of 7 seats for the Greens they would get their 7 candidates who had ended up unelected in the order of those who had gotten the most votes around the country. So the constituency with the highest polling Green candidate at the end of the count process would have that Green candidate being deemed to be elected as a top/mop up overhang representative. They would still have to have run candidates who were from somewhere and the choice still remains with the electorate not the party hierarchy as to who is elected. And the parties have been given an incentive to run broad slates.

A counter argument might be advanced that party X might still not pick enough women but if that were the case and if the electorate (who are 50% female after all) care enough about gender alone and party Y runs more women then it is party Y not party X would benefit. The aim of this system is to break down barriers, to encourage more diversity – what happens after that is in the hands of the prospective candidates and the electorate.

In summary, we have real problems in our politics as a result of excessive clientelism and a lack of diversity at election time but we need to consider how any systemic changes being suggested would work in the actual environment that exists in Ireland. Too much discussion is based on laboratory conditions or what happens elsewhere under entirely different electoral systems. We need to recognise that encouraging much more choice is better in the long run than seeking to restrict choice and that our ties to purely geographically based representation is blinding us to inventive but practical options that might assist us to combating clientelism.

The Healy Raes are from Kilgarvan, not Killorglin.

// December 21st, 2010 // No Comments » // 2010

Killorglin is a goat worshipping merchant town, Kilgarvan is the home of the Healy Raes. Kilgarvan consists of the local pub, garage, shop post office and plant hire business all owned by the Healy Raes and a couple of dozen houses that their staff and captive customers live in.

In the last two weeks both the Phoenix and now the Village Magazine have referred to the Healy Rae as being concerned first and foremost with the potholes of Killorglin. They aren’t, they’re concerned with the potholes of Kilgarvan. I come from Killorglin and while we do indeed annually crown a goat as our king for the 3 days of Puck we were not in the habit of electing one to the Oireachtas for years on end. So I’d love if people could remember which is which, Killorglin is home to a goat King 3 days a year, Kilgarvan sends one to Dublin most weeks on the train.

FF’s strategy for salvation

// September 20th, 2010 // No Comments » // election 2010

For a good while now, I’ve thought that FF would use the next budget as a platform for the election. They would fight the election campaign on the basis of the detail of the budget and force the opposition to produce (at short notice and without immediate access to the resources of the Department of Finance) their counter proposals. It allows FF to get the agenda on the economy and to make the election be about the 2010 budget rather than the overall budgetary strategy over the next 5 years.

The FF electoral strategy at the next general election, whenever it would be, has to be to ensure that they finish within Labour of a majority i.e. that the seat totals of the two parties adds up to 84 (83 if they can get someone from outside their numbers to be Ceann Comhairle) or worst case that they have enough seats combined with the right people to be able to convincingly challenge for that outcome at the next election. That has always been the case, but now FF might be realising that going now might not be any worse or better than holding on to pass two harsh budgets and past the point once the full effects of the measures already pass have been felt by the public at large.

I think we are getting close to that situation now, preparations for the budget would (in the broad outline form at least) be reasonably well advanced by now by the department of Finance – it’s around now that the old Book of Estimates would be produced.  Exactly what the individual departments would think of their allocation would not be known, but it might even allow for ministers to claim this program or that initiative might be spared. So if the election were called at some stage in the next few weeks, the election could take place then the Dail resume and elect a Taoiseach but then this new government is pretty much be stuck with the outgoing governments figures as happened in 1987!

The stumbling block for the main government party might be that the opposition don’t allow them to conduct a leadership contest before calling an election but rather force a vote in the Oireachtas and collapse the government with no leader in place.

Does Ivor Callely own any property at all?

// July 14th, 2010 // No Comments » // Uncategorized

Yesterday Sen Callely said in respect of the property in West Cork that he was claiming allowances and mileage from that “I have a right to reside in west Cork but it’s not in my ownership.” This was in response to questioning from Sen. Joe O’Toole who asked if he owned the property in west Cork. So he has the right to live there but he does not own it. Ivor Callely has also repeatedly alluded to personal family conditions that make his being totally transparent about his living situation more difficult.

So it is beginning to look like Ivor, at some point in the recent past, might have been too clever by half and that all “his” property is not in his name at all but rather it is in his wife’s or other family members names and that this might be the cause of some difficulty for him in establishing what is and is not his principal residence. Cos he might well own nothing and have no rental agreement with anyone and thus not be able to prove that he in fact lives or has a principal residence anywhere. Just why, you might ask, would someone transfer ownership of their assets to others? Well, one situation in which it would make sense was if you were a public representative and wanted to avoid declaring these interests in the declaration of members interests. Did Ivor Callely do this? I don’t know and I’m not going to say he did this.

It is also worth noting that “Mr Callely told the committee the house in west Cork had been for sale since “04/05-ish”. He said he had never denied it was for sale and insisted he would not benefit, in terms of capital gains tax liability, if it was sold.” So he won’t benefit from it at all, again seeming to mean he does not own it or have a financial interest in it. But this begs the questions did he ever own it and if he did when and why did he transfer the ownership.

Now let’s review someone else whose family situation meant they couldn’t be 100% clear with the public about their finances, former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern. Bertie had a legal separation agreement with his wife and the terms and details of this could not be made public. This meant we, the taxpayers and as voters his employers,  couldn’t find out exactly what he owned and when he got it or what he transferred to her and his children once the separation was agreed. All very inconvenient the Taoiseach told us as it might he couldn’t be completely transparent with us the voters though he really really wanted to be.

One other thing which is probably entirely unrelated, as we were assured that the former Taoiseach was a God fearing man and didn’t hold with this sort of thing, is the provisions of divorce law in Ireland. These say you might, in order to file for divorce, need to show that you had been legally separated from your spouse for or living apart for a number of years before a divorce might be granted. I’m not sure if this legal agreement needs to actually be publicly available or acknowledged once it is drawn up all proper and legal like and is agreeable to both parties. So such an agreement might exist and we the public would be none the wiser.

One can imagine the situation and in truth rather untenable legal position that a person might hypothetically find themselves in if say they had transferred all their property to their spouse for some reason or other and were years later to find themselves because of changed personal circumstances agreeing a separation agreement with their spouse. After all, once their spouse’s name was on the property they couldn’t legally argue that it was meant to be still their property really. It’s like something out of a badly plotted rom-com.

But back to Ivor, and away from these hypothetical and entirely unconnected people, he continues to defend himself before the Seanad committee who are it seems are bullying him, just like some other people were bullying Sen. Mullen last week. To add insult to injury it turns out the state is fronting Ivor €50 to turn up to an investigation into his circumstances. You couldn’t make this stuff up.