Election 2020

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    Greens need a wellbeing prenup.

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    Quality-of-life indicators guarantee good policies and, crucially, implementation that can save Eamon Ryan from allegations of unrealism. By Michael Smith. The danger: farce When Napoleon III, nephew of the dictator Napoleon Bonaparte became dictator of France himself in 1851, Karl Marx wrote: Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce. The problem: last marriage didn’t work out The Green Party, which was married to Fianna Fáil from 2007-2011 (and the PDs up to 2009) is in danger of entering a farcical re-marriage to Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. If you’re marrying someone you think isn’t into you, you should get a detailed and watertight pre-nup.  Especially if you were married to them before and it didn’t work out; and they’ve been making nasty comments about you for years. Unfortunately, as they endlessly but secretively progress their formal talks not on nuptials but on a programme for government, there is no suggestion on a strategic level the Greens.  have remembered that the age-old and continuing problem with Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael and the environment is they are often happy to make promises and even to provide new measures, it is just that they do not provide for their enforcement. If the Greens do not adjust their capacity for realism there is a danger they will split. Worse, at the moment, the split on offer – between Catherine Martin,  Deputy Leader and Eamon Ryan, Leader – isn’t even on ideological grounds.  The Greens, who can often be soft-minded seem to be  teed up for a silly contest pitting the need for loyalty to a lovely fella on the one hand against the need for someone who’s a woman and not (deepdown) from Dublin 4 on the other; without particular reference to efficacy, radicalism or lessons learnt. The solution: “credible” quality of life indicators The Greens already failed to plant the ball in the open net Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael left them when those parties notably committed in their framework document for coalition of 15 April to “credible” quality of life indicators. Indicators means measurements of success. It has long been established that environmentalists best achieve both a) the full breadth of their quality of life agenda (also known as a wellbeing or sustainability agenda)  and b) its enforcement, through up to 100 of these indicators which replace GDP as the gauge of society’s success. This agenda is well recognised by the UN, OECD, EU and others. The point is that it covers a multitude including reduction of emissions and protection and enhancement of biodiversity; and a full range of other environmental and of social and economic indicators that are established progressively, rendered as targets and systematically monitored. If the targets are flouted the pre-nup kicks in dictating divorce. Environmentally you might have climate, biodiversity, balanced rural development, numbers, quality and mix of new housing etc. Socially you might have equality of income and wealth, employment rates, imprisonment rates, implementation of Sláintecare etc. Economically you might have growth, inflation, household and national debt etc. …A hundred indicators in total. What else? Official buy-in including from Finance Department Through these, enshrined in a programme for government and with buy-in from top civil servants and the Departments of Finance and the Taoiseach, the Greens should establish, and guarantee implementation of, radical policies and standards. The Greens’ current approach: following up 17 questions The letter from Eamon Ryan to the bigger parties of 23 April, following up the big parties’ framework document, did duly outline that such indicators should “shape the economic recovery”. But that suggests he sees them as secondary to the economy and there is no mention of them in the 17 questions included in the letter or, inevitably then, in the nice flexible follow-up letter from the bigger parties of 28 April. Unlike other Green parties, interestingly the Irish Greens down the years, even in their constitution, seem never to have embraced the centrality – promoted by the UN –  of sustainability and quality of life. Then again the Greens also left out biodiversity – remember we’ve lost 60% of vertebrate animals in the last fifty years and it’s supposed to be the second most important issue for them – from their questions. They’re making it up, you know. Many commentators, who know nothing about the environmental agenda, assume the Greens are big policy wonks.  Environmentalism is a bit off the track for the sort of journalists who become respected political commentators in the Irish Times and Business Post.  They don’t want to do any research about whether the Greens have good policies or indeed how they did when they were in government from 2007-11 and they don’t want to be mean to this new agenda and its sunny leadership.  So they assume the Greens are masters of policy. A recent profile of Eamon Ryan in the Business Post and another assessment by Harry McGee in the Irish Times on whether the Greens ‘played senior hurling’ in government, fall into this category. If you have a reputation  for getting up early you can sleep until noon. The Greens were no good at policy when they were in government 2007-2011 and they are not good at it now.  Of course most of the other parties are worse. The Greens’ history: underachievement I’ve been around long enough to be aware how little the Greens achieved in coalition from 2007 to 2011. We need only to look at the statistics on what sort of impression they made on the guts of their agenda. Planning If we had planning legislation that worked we wouldn’t have continued to build one in four houses one-off in the middle of the countryside and allowed  Dublin to sprawl all over Leinster when the ideal, and even the national planning strategies, required channelling development away from Dublin into other cities and rural towns.  Biodiversity and transport We did not arrest cascading

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    Progressive but a little light on policy and not hard-minded enough. The Green Party again tees up its conscience with a somewhat deficient set of questions for the establishment parties.

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    By Michael Smith. Green Party leader Eamon Ryan has set out a ‘Green New Deal’ and 17 questions in a six-page letter sent to Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael on Wednesday in response to their framework coalition document The 17 “questions” are: Will you commit to an average annual reduction in greenhouse gas emissions of at least 7 per cent? Will you commit to an ambitious programme of development of, and investment where necessary in, renewable energy infrastructure including off-shore wind, grid and interconnector upgrades and community energy projects? Will you commit to ending the issue of exploration licences for offshore gas exploration? Will you commit to ceasing the construction of new fossil fuel infrastructure, particularly LNG import terminals that could allow the entry of unconventional liquefied natural gas into the Irish energy mix? Will you commit to the exclusive provision of public housing, social housing and cost rental housing on public lands? Will you commit to prioritising urban renewal in line with a ‘Town Centre First’ model? Will you commit to a comprehensive deep retrofit programme as part of a programme for government? Will you commit to convening a social dialogue process representative of all key stakeholders with a view to developing of a new social contract? Will you commit to working towards ending the Direct Provision system and replacing it with a not-for-profit system based on accommodation provided through existing or new approved housing bodies? Will you commit to setting us on a clear and certain path to meeting our UN obligation to spend 0.7pc of our national income on Overseas Development Aid? Will you commit to the development of a national land use plan which will inform both the new national economic plan and the new social contract? Will you commit to rebalancing our transport infrastructure spend, dedicating at least 20pc of infrastructure expenditure in transport to cycling and walking and ensuring that other public transport infrastructure investment is allocated at least two-thirds of the remaining infrastructure budget? Will you commit to establishing a trial of Universal Basic Income (UBI) within the lifetime of the next Government? Will you commit to the revision of the existing National Development Plan so that we can meet our New Social Contract goals and climate change targets? Will you commit to a review of the State’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic, undertaken by the Oireachtas, to enable us to learn lessons for the future? Will you provide a clear and detailed analysis of how your Joint Framework Document is to be financed? Will you commit to publishing and implementing a Green Procurement Policy? The questions posit a remarkably incomplete policy agenda for a Green Party. Greater quality was clearly needed in replying to a very loose document from Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, one which included unacknowledged surprisingly progressive but waffly and incomplete agendas for “a new social contract”, “a new green deal” and “a better quality of life for all”, at its heart. There is no mention of equality in the questions. A basic income is a small part only of any modern equality agenda. It is unclear what a new social contract, a term used in the Fianna Fáil-Fine Gael document means. There is more mention of equality in the document outside of the questions, including a reference to the social contract “addressing inequality for all our people”, but little chance other parties or commentators will treat seriously imperatives that failed to make it into the headline questions. For some time now the Greens have been promoting “social justice” rather than economic equality. That is not the established term for radical movements towards equality. It’s a quainter and more opaque notion than equality, and sometimes rooted in Catholic doctrine. There are references to equality on several lifestyle and sectoral issues such as gender and race, but, despite acceptance of the need for “anti-poverty” “development” there is no reference to redistribution of wealth and income. It’s clearly not a part of the Greens’ agenda. Five of the seventeen questions relate to climate change. Four of them are filler – details on the headline question which is about guaranteeing 7% annual emissions reductions, and which to be fair they have properly emphasised. If the 7% is agreed the four other specific issues would inevitably be part of the means to that end. Their iteration suggests the Greens lack confidence in a fuller agenda. Many other conventional imperatives appear in the body of the text but in ramshackle and unclear forms so they are unlikely to be taken up by the bigger parties in this process. This is confirmed by the fact that the Greens forgot to mention biodiversity, the demise of species – after climate the vital second pillar of a proper green agenda – in any of the 17 questions, though there is an ambitious if airy-fairy reference to it in the body of the text of the letter. On planning they are looking for something that is already in place and not working – a national land use plan. Town-centre-first is scarcely a comprehensive description of a land-use planning strategy for a party for which planning is assumed to be central. They have not suggested how they propose to develop the encouraging willingness of the civil war parties, reported as the lead story in the Business Post of 23 April, to facilitate a referendum on the Kenny Report which dealt, in 1973, with the price of building land. There was no sign the Greens see the scope for a referendum that would facilitate plan-led development as well as simply keeping prices to current-use value plus 25%. In general the Greens seem, voguishly, to be emphasising delivery of affordable housing over planning for quality housing, though there approach remains better than that of other parties on the issue. On an overweening strategic level, there is no suggestion the Greens have remembered that the age-old and continuing problem with Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael and the environment is they provide

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    The armalite and the ballot box: election results could vindicate Sinn Féin’s electoral strategy.

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    Via violence to contempt to abstentionism to normalisation perhaps to government. By Dan Haverty. It is difficult to exaggerate the magnitude of Sinn Féin’s electoral performance in the Irish general election. Once the political wing of the paramilitary Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA), Sinn Féin took down a political establishment that had been in power since the state’s foundation in 1922. It won the most first preference votes of any party, topping the poll in a shocking 24 out of 39 constituencies. It secured its place as the leading voice of the Irish left, probably marking the definitive end of the Labour Party’s 108-year run as a relevant force in national politics. Although it only ran 42 candidates across the 39 constituencies (thus ensuring it didn’t win even more seats), pundits agree that Sinn Féin is now one of the dominant forces in Irish politics. For outside observers, the results mark a dramatic realignment of Irish politics that began with the financial collapse in 2008. For republicans, Sinn Féin’s historic performance brings a highly controversial four-decade-old internal process of politicisation close to final vindication. The modern iteration of Sinn Féin emerged out of a split within the republican movement in 1970. The ‘Provisional’ faction of the movement (from which modern Sinn Féin emerged) opposed the ‘Official’ faction’s move toward electoral politics, choosing instead to pursue the full unification of Ireland through violence. Born in a culture of absolute contempt for party politics, Sinn Féin’s role was minimal, serving as little more than a mouthpiece for the far larger and more active Provisional IRA. Sinn Féin began to take on a more important role in the movement’s activities as tensions between authorities and republican internees in Long Kesh prison worsened in the late 1970s. In 1976, the British government chose to revoke political status from paramilitary prisoners in its attempt to “normalise” and “criminalise” the security situation in Northern Ireland. This sparked a spontaneous prison-wide protest among republican prisoners, culminating in the high-profile hunger strikes of 1980 and 1981. The republican leadership on the outside had little control over the direction of the protest movement, and rather than try to assert authority over its living martyrs, it opted instead to organise a grassroots campaign to support them. Sinn Féin was at the forefront of directing the day-to-day activities of the so-called Anti H-Block committees, organising street demonstrations and fund-raising campaigns that generated a renewed interest in—and sympathy for—the republican struggle. The campaign escalated sharply in March 1981, when independent Fermanagh and South Tyrone MP Frank Maguire died of a sudden heart attack, forcing a by-election for his seat. Sinn Féin was initially reluctant to contest the seat, fearing a loss would undermine support for the prisoners. But it ultimately decided that a strong enough loss would still serve its wider purposes, and it chose to stand lead hunger striker Bobby Sands on an Anti H-Block ticket. A groundswell of support followed, which Sinn Féin carefully channelled into electoral points for Sands. Sands won the election, sending shockwaves through both the British and Irish political establishments. Two more hunger strikers were elected to the Irish parliament in the general election in June of that year, convincing a large section of the movement that a well-organised, grassroots campaign in support of republican objectives could deliver tangible political results. In the aftermath of the hunger strikes, Sinn Féin opted for a new strategy combining armed struggle with electoral politics. But by the middle of the 1980s, the Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness-led leadership decided a more comprehensive electoral strategy was needed to advance the struggle. They wanted to build a political movement in the Republic to support the fight for freedom in the North, but they knew this required an economic and social programme independent of the struggle that could appeal to Southern working-class voters. This necessarily had to include a commitment to take their seats in the Irish legislature, an institution Sinn Féin had never previously participated in because it was viewed as a British-imposed body with no legitimacy in Ireland. The ensuing debate over whether to end abstention from the Irish legislature opened a chasm within the movement, pitting traditionalists against reformists over the soul of republicanism. Abstentionism was first employed in the 1910s in an attempt to render the British parliament inoperable, but it was elevated to principle status after the revolutionary period of the 1920s. Traditionalists argued that it embodied their rejection of British-imposed institutions and thus justified the armed struggle. On a strategic level, traditionalists always argued that violence was the only force capable of pushing the British out of Ireland. If a political strategy was adopted, its needs would supersede the needs of the armed struggle, and the IRA would have to be restrained and eventually disbanded, thus depriving the movement of its cutting edge. Once defanged, the need to win votes would lead to ever increasing compromises which would push republicans to soften their political aims, thus neutralizing any meaningful threat to the state. But by the mid-1980s, the conflict was nearing two decades old and was seemingly in a stalemate, and the reformists privately arrived at the conclusion that the moment for armed struggle had passed and they could no longer achieve their aims militarily. They feared that if they did not change their tactics, they risked losing the tremendous wave of sympathy generated by the hunger strikes. They concluded that the conditions were ripe enough to move Sinn Féin and the IRA fully out of war and into politics. The reformists won out, and in 1986, the IRA made the historic decision to drop abstention from the Irish parliament and allow elected Sinn Féin representatives to take their seats. It followed an emotional (and deeply divisive) debate within the movement, leading a faction of traditionalists to leave and form their own breakaway group. It still took decades for Sinn Féin to build a respectable following in the Republic, but the change freed it to

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    General Election 2020 Editorial: Vote Left and green

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    In 2016  (and 2011, actually) Village editorialised, “You would think from our recent history of some of the most notoriously bad governance on the planet, that we would have learnt that our political classes need to be replaced. In fact, this election time we see no new ideas”. Sadly democracy in Ireland needs an overhaul every bit as much now as it did in 2016 and 2011. Village remains disappointed at the quality of politics, across the range.  The parties are again fairly easily characterised: Fine Gael is a centre-right party with an obsession with observing the rights of property that has failed to establish an enticing vision, especially socially and environmentally, of Irish society.  In nine years in government it has failed abjectly on housing where there are 10,000 homeless and health where there are more than 500,000 on outpatient waiting lists. It has a tendency to indulge nastiness against the most vulnerable on issues from social welfare to immigration rights. Though heralded as economically competent it is not clear that it was wise for it to facilitate a hard Brexit. Labour never does what its progressive manifestos promise. Worse, a number of its senior TDs appear ideologically jaded. Because of the elasticity of its conscience Labour has long attracted the wrong type of representatives. Fianna Fáil is tainted by its reckless and corrupt past and the incoherence of its platform. It believes serving the people, parish and business in equal measure is viable. It has an attractive leader in Micheál Martin though one who only belatedly seemed to demur from the shenanigans of Charlie Haughey and Bertie Ahern under whom he served. Its centre-left incarnation disguises regressive and socially conservative tendencies. Sinn Féin’s manifesto commitment to a Left agenda is impressive but precarious bearing in mind its preference for irredentist nationalism over ideology, its centrist pragmatism in the North and especially its willingness to coalesce with Fianna Fáil or even Fine Gael. It has been ambivalent about democracy and transparency, and its leaders lie casually about its, and the IRA’s, past. It has not fully accepted an environmental agenda. Village has had a weakness for the Social Democrats, whose mild but sensible platform is essentially the same as Labour’s, but it has probably blown its chance by personality frictions and policy divisions between an old guard centred on quality of life and a younger cohort focused on identity politics. The radical Left offers the huge appeal of integrity and seriousness but its opposition to property taxes is inexcusable, and its focus on opposition to the loathed water taxes rather than a broader anti-inequality platform, including opposition to the iniquities of Nama, corruption and the resurrection of the developer classes wasted time and energy and diverted its revolutionary ideology. As Oisín Coulter’s piece shows it may be happy avoiding power. The Green Party’s policies are often radical, and its agenda mature, but it is not hard-minded and the implications of its failure to realise how little it achieved the last time it was in government means it is difficult to be enthusiastic. The Independent Alliance (or whatever it’s called, formerly Shane Féin) is utterly incoherent of policy and membership; and appears moribund.  Village believes promoting equality of outcome, sustainability and accountability are the most important policies; and it is difficult to be optimistic about their immediate Irish prospects. A radical new venture is needed. Against this backdrop, we would again not presume to advise readers precisely where to direct their votes. However, we can say the non-ideological, non-visionary parties of the pragmatic centre hold little appeal, even when the non-vision seems to be a slightly left-of-centre non-vision. A coalition of the parties of the Left, radical Left and the Greens would, as always, best promote Village’s agenda, if no doubt imperfectly.

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    Leo Varadkar, dicing with nastiness

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    Taoiseach Leo Varadkar is viscerally and divisively right-wing, socially and economically; but hides it behind incoherent and inept policies and a now-suspect nice-guy media persona.    By Michael Smith (February 2020).  A famous 2010 Après Match sketch has Ireland’s Taoiseach Leo Varadkar openly admitting he’s plotting to knife his party leader Enda Kenny while gratuitously denying, in a mid-Atlantic nasal twang, that he’s going to set up an elite party which of course suggests he is in fact intending to do just that. A stage-Vincent-Browne with an impossible wig wonders whether he was bitten by a lizard, a snake or an eel. Though the elite party isn’t part of the revealed agenda he’s an exotic and cosmopolitan proposition no doubt; young and attractive, hipsterish, agnostic; a half-Indian, gay, charming and articulate doctor; a star-turn on the international stage.  Over the last decade the satirist Oliver Callan has characterised Varadkar as an image-fetishising, gym-obsessed dude, increasingly cold to the downsides of his austere policies, the Teesh in a cabal of unpleasant elitists.  The Varadkar who presented at the first leaders’ debate on 22 January 2020 had clearly been briefed to project an image of humility, emotion and modesty.  Two and a half years into his premiership, scrutiny, the pressure of office and the relentless exposure of the policies and failures of his party are undermining his nice-guy credentials as his empathy becomes an election issue. And, as Village has always wondered, is there any beef?  Varadkar is young and attractive, hipsterish, agnostic: a half-Indian, gay, charming and articulate doctor’  Background  Varadkar was born in Dublin in 1979. the youngest of three and the only son of Ashtok and Miriam Varadkar. His Mumbai-born father had moved to England as a doctor in the 1960s. Miriam comes from a Fianna Fáil family; Ashtok considered himself a socialist and voted Labour. His Dungarvan-born mother met her husband while working as a nurse in Slough. Later they lived in Leicester and India, returning to Dublin in 1973.  Leo, it seems, was the perfect son. His mother has said: “He was too good to be true, actually. Everyone adored him. He was adorable, a gorgeous baby and then he went into  Fine Gael. And that’s it. He never said it. We just found out”. So little Leo wasn’t born a Fine Gaeler.  But he soon made up for lost time.   Varadkar was brought up Catholic and educated at the St Francis Xavier National School in his home of Blanchardstown before attending the liberalising fee-paying Church of Ireland King’s Hospital School in Palmerstown, where his classmates included the future excitable-presenter Kathryn Thomas. He obtained a wagon-load of points in his Leaving Cert. It was during his secondary schooling, debating and all that, that he joined Fine Gael.   After an abortive few weeks in the Law faculty, he got a points-upgrade and studied Medicine at Trinity College Dublin, graduating in 2003. He spent several years as a junior doctor in Connolly Hospital before qualifying as a general practitioner in 2010. He often worked 36-hour shifts as a doctor, missing a night’s sleep; but rather than finding it stressful, he has said: “I quite liked the buzz of being busy”. Nevertheless, in 2016, he declined an invitation by the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO) to work a 12-hour shift alongside them in an A&E because “they never formally asked”.  Around this time Varadkar was singled out for greatness by the Washington Ireland Program, which prepares ambitious young people for future leadership roles. Party grandee Nora Owen recalls him as overweight and Thatcherite around this time when he came to her attention.  In 2004 the tyro’s ambition began to find expression as he was co-opted to Fingal County Council, serving as deputy mayor.  Varadkar was first actually elected to Fingal County Council later on in 2004, drawing 4,894 votes, the highest in the State; there was a niche in Fingal for at least one meaty Thatcherite.  He won a Dáil seat in 2007 and was immediately elevated by Enda Kenny to frontbench Spokesperson on Enterprise, Trade and Employment, remaining in this position until a 2010 reshuffle when he became Spokesperson on Communications, Energy and Natural Resources.   In Government  Transport  When Kenny led Fine Gael into Government with Labour, Varadkar served as Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport, from 2011 to 2014. He presided over ‘The Gathering’: the largest and most successful tourism initiative ever held in Ireland though one that left little in the way of a long-term imprint. He took the decision to link Dublin’s two independent Luas lines, opened up more bus routes to competition, restarted development at the National Sport Campus, and gave independence to Shannon Airport. He also developed a new Road Safety Strategy and a National Ports Policy.    These are petty enough achievements for a three-year Ministry.   He was already burnishing his lack of interest in the environment and did little to implement Noel Dempsey’s typically progressive ‘Smarter Travel – a Sustainable Transport Future’. He obtained government funding for its commitment to the €550m 57km public-private partnership of the egregiously over-scaled Gort-Tuam motorway while cancelling the necessary Dart Underground and Metro North underground plans, and again deferring Metro West, in Dublin.    ’ These are petty enough achievements for a three-year Ministry’   Health  He was then promoted to Minister for Health (2014-16) where he secured a controversial €1bn increase in the health budget, introduced free un-means-tested GP care for all children under six and seniors over 70, in what were iniquitous policy lurches. He published Ireland’s first ever National Maternity Strategy and secured funding and planning permission for the shifted National Children’s Hospital. He also introduced innovative public health legislation to regulate alcohol pricing and marketing and sought a 20% tax on sugar-sweetened drinks.   Health is never an easy gig but he did not do anything dramatic beyond disposing of his party’s clearest policy – the promise to create a universal health care system, to move away from the invidious “two-tier” health system. Remarkably, he never had to explain what he was replacing it with. It’s not evident he even thought that the particular principle, or indeed having a principle, was of any significance. The issue is only now being addressed under the fangled ‘Sláintecare’, though with a long horizon.   The HSE too, in accordance with policy, was supposed to be abolished by 2020, though beyond a “healthcare commissioning agency” it was not clear by what it would be replaced. This did not happen, anyway, and it remains very much with us, a blotch of redundancy for a regime that fancies it is business-like. Some months ago, Minister Simon Harris announced it is to become a strategy and standards body supplemented by six regional health boards, not unlike those that predated the HSE’s establishment.   Varadkar also seems to have had little problem with the entitlements of professionals and, as Minister, announced the restoration of €12,000 for consultants who backed the Haddington Road and Lansdowne Road agreements. Of course, the indulgence of the entitled elite really re-emerged when complacency about the economy set in a few years later.  In late 2019 Health Minister Simon Harris proposed that hospital consultants be offered a salary of up to €252,150, a significant increase on the rates currently applying to post-2012 consultants, under a new public-only consultant contract which prohibits private practice either on or off-site. It seems reasonable

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    Electoral fickleness in liquid modernity.

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    Change melts political loyalties so parties such as Sinn Féin can only, strategically, aim to generate temporary commonalities. By Ronan Doyle. “The old guard can have yesterday”, tweeted Sinn Féin the day before the general election. “Tomorrow is ours. Vote for change. Vote for Unity”. On that particular morrow sufficient votes were returned to push a post-election narrative that is now centred on political, social and economic change. As for the place of unity, it remains to be seen. Consciously or unconsciously, change is something that we have been prioritising, individually and collectively, for quite some time. Consider the perspective on change afforded Irish citizens currently in their seventies or above: in 1945 two out of three Irish homes did not have electricity or a piped water supply; in the 1946 census 94.3% of citizens in the Republic identified as Roman Catholic, while 97.8% of the 32-county population had been born on the island of Ireland; in 1949 a woman from County Laois was sentenced to death (subsequently commuted to life imprisonment) for poisoning her brother with strychnine – in 1949 this was Ireland’s solitary murder.  The profundity of change that has been implemented and absorbed within living memory sees a twenty-first century Ireland  where the private car, mobile phones and the internet are now effectively ubiquitous; where divorce, same-sex marriage and abortion have been legalised; where kids don’t know how to run or play spontaneously, where, perhaps, the public are being desensitised to violent crime; where the country’s extensive network of water pipes is falling to pieces, in a home to the most dynamic global ‘tech’ companies, one of the richest countries in the world.   All changed utterly. So what exactly is different about the change we’ve been experiencing more recently? The principal difference is seen in the ever-increasing rate and complexity of change: things change much faster than they used to, and more things are changing all the time. With dramatic and continual technological advancements enabling both this escalation and proliferation, many of our most basic value prioritisations are also quite naturally being reshaped.  Not so long ago the institutions of church, state, capitalism and tradition were the bedrock upon which a nation’s people might ‘settle down’, ‘stick to the task’ and individually realise the collective ambition of the pensionable job and a house (or a mortgage) for life. Today, stability and durability betoken a certain stasis: the paralysis of being old-fashioned or incapable of moving with the times, of failing to adequately upskill, upgrade and improve. To be ‘settled’ now can suggest an inability, no matter how unfair, to take proper advantage of the present conditions or to escape situations – professional, social or personal – that have become unsatisfying.  The instability that many of a certain age were conditioned to repel is now something to be nurtured. The most ‘successful’ people now tend to be its most mobile: that is, those with the least restrictive ties; those who can move most easily between spaces, markets and jobs, between people and morals; those, in other words, who are most adaptable to change, as well as their own fluctuating wishes.  The theory of liquid modernity, developed by Polish philosopher and sociologist Zygmunt Bauman, offers an interpretation of contemporary societal conditions that keeps the processes of modernising change at its mutable core. It is not a theory that makes particularly good reading for politicians or, perhaps, for those who elect them to office. On many levels the politician, as stereotypically conceived, would seem preternaturally made for liquid modernity. However, as the rate and complexity of change has increased, so too has the instability inherent in our erstwhile solid socio-political institutions, as well as the necessity for increased mobility to respond to that instability.  If access to data and financial capital denote contemporary power, then power is already flowing away from the old institutions, from Parliament. Borders and boundaries, previously demarcating economic, socio-cultural and political territories, are becoming increasingly porous and inconsequential. There is little to stop the flow or instantaneous movement of power – and the free market does not want it stopped.  For Bauman, as a consequence, power now primarily exists in the largely borderless electronic networks that connect the liquid-modern world.  All of which means that our politicians, and their politics, have  become more bark than bite. The escalation and proliferation of change has also seen an intensification of our very modern tendency toward individualism, including as voters. With the traditional public space increasingly undermined, our personal ambitions and our wishes are now most clearly defined by our own uniquely individual and private circumstances and expectations, which are themselves subject to continual change.  Bauman’s theory suggests that, with things as they are, the kind of collective public unity that Sinn Féin are hoping to mobilise, is actually impossible to develop. The elector, essentially, has become as fickle and unreliable as the elected representative. While the days of inherited loyalty to Fine Gael or Fianna Fáil may well be over, it may also be that the days of sustained loyalty to any political party are over. Rather than wasting time trying to develop faithfully reliable constituencies, the liquid-modern political strategist will identify commonalities that bring people ‘together’ at just the right time – and for just the right amount of time – to deliver results, before the same people disperse again like participants in a Twitterstorm or a brief, collaborative Open Source project.          A concluding reference to The Communist Manifesto seems timely:  “All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses, his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind”. The emergence of a mature left alternative in Ireland will require time. But with the rate of change so fast and so erratic, and with more solids melted than Marx or Engels could ever have predicted, time is the commodity that today feels in shortest supply. It may not be possible to know where change is

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    The election’s unspoken issue

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    Many reproductive rights will depend on who is in power for the next few years By Neasa Candon General Election 2020 has seen almost no discussion about how to build upon last year’s Yes vote and achieve equal access to free, safe and legal abortion services for all living in Ireland. In the lifetime of the next government, the incoming Minister for Health will review the legislation currently regulating abortion services in Ireland, the Health (Regulation of Termination of Pregnancy) Act 2018. Consensus  analysis of polling data suggests that, without a left-swing strong enough to win the 27 seats needed for a broad-left coalition, there is a high chance that the emerging government will be led by Fianna Fáil. Given the large proportion of anti-choice voices in Fianna Fáil, the junior party, or parties, of a coalition government would face significant resistance to the much-needed furthering of  access to abortion care. Resisting Repeal Although Micheál Martin advocated a Yes vote in the lead-up to the referendum to repeal the Eighth Amendment, he has spoken publicly of his personal conflict in abandoning his long-standing anti-choice stance. Martin’s decision caused conniptions in Fianna Fáil, which had voted to retain the Eighth Amendment at its 2017 Ard Fheis. Fianna Fáil continues to allowed freedom of conscience on the issue of abortion. The withholding of the party whip was probably a strategic decision by Martin, given that 31 of the 57 Fianna Fáil TDs and Senators campaigned against a Yes vote in the 2018 referendum. If elected Taoiseach, it is very uncertain that Martin would introduce any measures facilitating access to abortion care, which would further destabilise his leadership. Fianna Fáil’s one hundred and fifty-two page manifesto sees only one reference to reproductive healthcare, as distinct from maternity care: it is about ensuring the availability of anomaly scans in all maternity hospitals. This one commitment does, at least, feature on the National Women’s Council of Ireland’s (NWCI) ‘Feminist Ireland Manifesto 2020’, and is echoed by Sinn Féin, which  promises staff and equipment along with access to foetal anomaly screenings in all hospitals. ‘No one left behind’ In choosing the theme ‘No one left behind’ for the September 2019 March for Choice, the Abortion Rights Campaign (ARC) drew attention to the large number of people in Ireland who, despite the legalisation of abortion, still cannot get access to a termination. The homogenised, top-down ‘Together for Yes’ campaign arguably reduced both the terms and the outcome of the Repeal referendum to a vague ‘right to choose’. Moralised debates in mainstream media, led by politicians and public figures in place of grassroots campaigners, failed to address the provisions necessary to overcome specific barriers to accessing healthcare. As a result, the Health (Regulation of Termination of Pregnancy) Act 2018 has instituted a ‘right to choose’, without the provisions, additional supports and legislative nuance required to ensure that this right can be vindicated by all. In campaigning for Repeal, and reproductive justice more generally, activists highlighted the distinct barriers to travelling abroad for abortion imposed by a person’s ability, medical needs, legal status, poverty, race/ethnicity, and rural location. Most, if not all, of these barriers have persisted since the legalisation of abortion. The suggested policy responses to each of these barriers, as detailed in party manifestos, are discussed below.  Direct Exclusion The wording of section 62 of the Health (Regulation of Termination of Pregnancy) Act 2018 is deliberately restrictive in promising abortion services to those “who are ordinarily resident in the State”. Undocumented migrants are excluded from the category of ‘ordinarily resident’, despite the fact that, like the large population of undocumented Irish in the US, most undocumented migrants have lived in Ireland for several years. Complex visa regimes cause many people to become undocumented, and may result in significant periods of time spent in precarious legal situations. The activist group, Migrants and Ethnic Minorities for Reproductive Justice (MERJ), were recently contacted by a pregnant woman in the process of renewing her visa, who was afraid to contact her GP as she was undocumented during that time. While awaiting visa renewal, she passed the 12-week limit for abortion access in Ireland.  Undocumented people are caught in a triple-bind. Seeking medical assistance can risk exposure and legal ramifications, including deportation; the cost of an abortion and other healthcare in Ireland is uncertain; and their legal status restricts their ability to travel. The overlap between health and migration policies here further demonstrates that manifesto policies cannot be read in a vacuum. For example, while Fine Gael refer to the National Intercultural Health Strategy 2018-2023, and their commitment to “enhance access” for “those from diverse ethnic, cultural and religious backgrounds”, this would not remove the ‘ordinarily resident’ criteria. The party pledge to consider the regularisation of undocumented children only. Despite committing to healthcare “free at the point of use” for “everyone”, Sinn Féin then makes reference to “entitlements to health care for citizens”. Regularisation of undocumented migrants is not mentioned in the party’s manifesto, and so it is unclear whether the ‘ordinarily resident’ criteria would be relaxed.  The Green Party and Social Democrats support regularisation for all, while labour support regularisation undocumented migrants who are children or ‘adult workers’. People Before Profit commit to a single-tier healthcare system “free at the point of use”, the eligibility criteria for which are not outlined. Fianna Fáil make reference to ‘integration’, but their manifesto lacks a right-based framework, and makes no reference to undocumented migrants. Safe Access Zones Along with contraception, Fine Gael’s only other reference to reproductive healthcare, as distinct from maternity services, is the introduction of ‘safe access zones’. However, the Irish Council of Civil Liberties (ICCL) have criticised Fine Gael’s delay in enacting this legislation, noting that Safe Access Zones were first promised by Minister for Health Simon Harris in December 2018.  Safe access zones legally restrict activities, such as protests or displays of distressing imagery, outside abortion service providers. Following demonstrations outside Holles Street maternity hospital on New Year’s day,

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