An overview of the many, many years of mismanagement, class warfare and narrow self interest which predated the foundation of the state by many decades. In short, Ireland's problems have toxic roots which reach all the way back to the famine years. Dr. McCabe's thesis reveals that those decisions which have had the most negative impact upon Ireland's long term future have been made purely in the interest of winning an election and retaining power.
The political editor of the Irish Times traces the history of the Fianna Fail Party. The copy I have leads up to the tenure of Bertie Ahern. More than a party at war with 'the blueshirts' of Fine Gael, it has been in a constant state of crisis within its own ranks pushing and pulling at itself. Charles J Haughey's period in office was nearly inevitable. The party which has governed our country the most in the last century fully deserves the forensic scrutiny Stephen Collins brings to this book.
This is the 'how to' and 'how not to' manual when it comes to forming a new political party in Ireland. Despite the dreadful reputational attacks they had to deal with from Fianna Fail in their two decades plus of existence the last 'newest political party' went into government four times with Fianna Fail. Naturally, as someone working on starting up a new political party, this book caught my attention and helped enormously especially with what not to do and how to avoid 'mission creep'.
This book told an ugly tale but told it with the panache and familiarity of someone of Mr. Ross' pedigree both as a merchant bank insider and as a dissenting independent senator, I would be very interested to see just what Mr. Ross intends to bring to his 'new party'. How much has he moved on from his days of being among Ireland's most privileged and most destructive? Will he use his insider knowledge to clean up our finances or will he use his impressive contacts to paper over the cracks?
The media economist's sequel to his hit book The Pope's Children, revealing his personal witness of the sequence of events that led to the disastrous bailout. David McWilliams then riffs on his Pope's Children characters to illustrate just how Ireland went from the best performing economy in Europe to one of the European economy's worst liabilities. It was a very good refresher course in what happened in my country over the nine years that I had been away in France.
So, to make sense of my decision of joining the Irish Democratic Party and committing my efforts to changing the entire spectrum of Irish politics, reading some or all of these books would be a great guide to my rationale.
So why did I join a 'start up' political party and why am I putting my head over the parapet?
Because of something I know that nobody else in Irish politics appears to be aware of and if they do, they certainly don't want to tell us:
IRELAND DOES NOT HAVE A REPUBLIC, IRELAND HAS A HEGEMONY.*
What does that scary looking statement mean?
*If you clicked on the links you would have been brought to the respective pages on Wikipedia, naturally there are other, less fluid research resources on the net but, for the purposes of this simple blog, Wikipedia is fine.
A Republic is a system of government in which the power resides in the people. Now, we only truly have the facsimile of this as has been evidenced by the recent transfer of billions of bad banking debt onto the shoulders of the Irish people and the very perpetrators of this banking collapse and scandal have not been brought to book. Nothing the Irish people can do, short of armed insurrection or a mass taxation strike, will turn the heads of the politicians we have supposedly elected under a republican system.
What I will show you now will prove that Ireland doesn't have a Republic and never had a fully functioning Republic to begin with. The Republic, the political system best suited to bringing peace and prosperity to our long suffering people, was cruelly snatched away from us by the very people who claimed to be 'republicans', and it was all for their own gain. This isn't about ideology this is about greed and ambition.
Like every viable political system, The Republic operates on a hierarchy of authority and responsibility, with different roles and budgets for each layer of the hierarchy. Irish Republican Democracy reflects the model of Parliamentary Republic where the head of state, An Uachtarán, has no executive power. Now, for the Parliamentary Republic model to work, the State's functions need to be separated and ruthlessly protected by each tier of responsibility. Notice I haven't said tier of power or authority, because, in a real republic, somebody has to carry the can. If you have written the cheque then you must honour the payment,
The model's responsibilities should look like this:
An Uachtarán - The symbolic head of state and the embodiment of the people and the constitution.
An Seanad - The guardians of the constitution, ensuring that Dáil legislation satisfies the constitution.
An Dáil - The legislature of the country. The Dáil holds the debate and then votes on bills presented by the ministers, and the cabinet,
An Comhairle Cuigeach (Provincial Councils) - These don't exist and yet, these are essential for the provision of large budget services - Instead we have invented Quangos to provide the services a state needs to provide.
City Mayors - Optional level of control based on whether the city has a sufficiently complex range of needs and duties.
An Comhairle Contae/Cathrach - (Town or county councils) - These do exist and used provide a wide range of services but budgetary power has now been handed to Quangos.
All the tiers should be elected and answerable to the public, like this.
What we have is this as far as I can see:
An Uachtarán - A symbolic head of state. Representing the people but having no duties for the constitution.
An Seanad - A much maligned body of junior party hacks and aging lecturers in politics who do not appear to understand their mission one jot.
An Dáil - Controls every part of public life and even has a whip hand on some quangos but not others, I believe that the Dáil is trying to do far too much for their abilities and resources.
Quangos - These bodies basically control the budgets for each state service provision and have no visible accountability to the Dáil outside of being 'grilled' occasionally by a Parliamentary Inquiry or Tribunal which has no legal power to punish.
Local councils - Where junior party hacks and aging senators end up if they can't even get into the Senate.
My tongue may be somewhat in my cheek but I want to make it clear that a Republic needs all the tiers of its political, financial, legislative and social functions being handled by the relevant and correct bodies. The state cannot be run from one room in Leinster House any more than a war can be successfully fought with just one kind of soldier.
By effectively removing the powers and authority of locally elected government, leaving the various Councillors with very few opportunities to effect a change for their constituents the Dáil has attacked the very structure of Irish Democracy.
By setting up Authorities, Quangos and Private Bodies such as Irish Water, Gas Networks Ireland and Eriva - the Dáil has effectively wrested control of those functions from the people best qualified to provide them and installed a statutory corporation which operates as a shelf company for future selling off of Irish resources. Ireland's own resources are no longer protected by constitutional bodies but private concerns.
By constantly sniping at the constitution and refusing adequate debate and information to the electorate, the Dáil is effectively vandalising the very edifice of Irish sovereignty at a time when national sovereignty everywhere is under sustained multinational and imperial attack.
An Seanad - A much maligned body of junior party hacks and aging lecturers in politics who do not appear to understand their mission one jot.
An Dáil - Controls every part of public life and even has a whip hand on some quangos but not others, I believe that the Dáil is trying to do far too much for their abilities and resources.
Quangos - These bodies basically control the budgets for each state service provision and have no visible accountability to the Dáil outside of being 'grilled' occasionally by a Parliamentary Inquiry or Tribunal which has no legal power to punish.
Local councils - Where junior party hacks and aging senators end up if they can't even get into the Senate.
My tongue may be somewhat in my cheek but I want to make it clear that a Republic needs all the tiers of its political, financial, legislative and social functions being handled by the relevant and correct bodies. The state cannot be run from one room in Leinster House any more than a war can be successfully fought with just one kind of soldier.
By effectively removing the powers and authority of locally elected government, leaving the various Councillors with very few opportunities to effect a change for their constituents the Dáil has attacked the very structure of Irish Democracy.
By setting up Authorities, Quangos and Private Bodies such as Irish Water, Gas Networks Ireland and Eriva - the Dáil has effectively wrested control of those functions from the people best qualified to provide them and installed a statutory corporation which operates as a shelf company for future selling off of Irish resources. Ireland's own resources are no longer protected by constitutional bodies but private concerns.
By constantly sniping at the constitution and refusing adequate debate and information to the electorate, the Dáil is effectively vandalising the very edifice of Irish sovereignty at a time when national sovereignty everywhere is under sustained multinational and imperial attack.
This is the behaviour of a Hegemony, seeking to limit power flowing to others and keeping all the power, wealth and authority for themselves and their own class.
Therefore it is right and good for this Dáil to face questions they haven't faced since the foundation of the State and to be challenged by a body that is structurally impossible to corrupt or bring to heel using intimidation or changing the law to suit them.
Therefore it is right and good for this Dáil to face questions they haven't faced since the foundation of the State and to be challenged by a body that is structurally impossible to corrupt or bring to heel using intimidation or changing the law to suit them.
The perfect weapon against Hegemony is Participatory Democracy,
That is why I have joined the Irish Democratic Party.
That is why I have joined the Irish Democratic Party.
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