Ireland's political and cultural magazine
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One of the side deals done in the attempts to form a government was to send the issue of the 8th amendment of the Constitution to a Constitutional Convention. The issue was raised by Labour, though just 2% of voters said it was the main determinant of their vote. Convening a convention is a good […]
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“The people have spoken, but what have they said?”, the head-scratching commentariat has endlessly mused since the March election, as it reluctantly negotiates a changed universe where politics once existed in a binary-star system with just one waxing or waning moon and the occasional incoming independent or ideological comet to exert some short-term gravitational influence […]
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“For good and bad Kelly killed the issue [of water charges], even if tens of thousands of diehards continue to protest the principle at occasional marches in Dublin” (Village, May 2015) Alan Kelly got it wrong. The mainstream media got it wrong. Village got it wrong. They were united in the rhetoric that water charges […]
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After almost seventy days wandering in the political wilderness the two largest parties have finally agreed a programme with a 30-month timelimit. As Village was going to print the programme was being supplemented with whatever concessions are necessary to attract at least eight independents into the Fine Gaelled minority administration in a ‘Programme for Partnership’. […]
For years vital Irish public services were consistently starved of funding at a time when taxes were being cut for electoral reasons. This is unfortunate but it has consequences which cannot be denied, whatever the ideology of the (non-)payer. Keeping water prices at an artificially low level leads to a vicious cycle of underfunded service-providers, […]
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‘Sharing in the recovery’ was the big theme in the work of the Irish National Organisation of the Unemployed (INOU) in 2015. Our members and affiliates, the users of our services, and participants in our regional Discussion Forums and training events were all clear that this recovery had yet to be experienced by many people […]
I keep meaning to make a list of a certain category of politician: cataloguing those who wasted my time over the past 20 years, leading me on about seeking ways to extend fairness and justice to fathers, with dozens of whom I’ve sat over copious coffees while they took elaborate notes of the nature of […]
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A bicycle is a simple machine but for cycling culture to be built vision and determination is needed. And funding.