September 6, 2006 at 2:38PM Questions for politicians
Damien’s looking for questions for politicians who stop at your door. A while back, I posted a few potential ones up in a comment. Here they are:
- Ireland has become somewhat overdependent on foreign companies. What does your party intend to do to encourage native entrepreneurship?
- What’s your party’s position on ministerial responsibility?
- If your party came to power, what would it do to roll back laws brought in by Michael McDowell which have eroded our personal liberties? (Obviously, you don’t want to ask a PD this question.)
- What’s your party’s position on automatic registration of voters at the age of 18?
- What does your party intend on doing to curb the expansion of Dublin at the expense of the rest of the country, especially the counties outside of Leinster?
- It’s not possible for we as taxpayers to read many of the government reports, &c., that we’ve already paid for online. The report of the Barr Tribunal is an example here: to read it you have to go to the Government Publications Office and purchase a copy; it can’t be read online. What does your party intend to do to remedy this situation?
- ComReg has repeatedly displayed a lack of courage when dealing with eircom’s lack of progress when it comes to opening up to competition, especially in regards to broadband. Is your party going to get ComReg to do their job, and if so, what are you going to do?
- There?s a democratic deficit in local government in this country, with town, city, borough, and county councils actings as little more than maintenance bodies lacking any real powers to deal with local issues and local circumstances. Does your party intend on promoting real decentralisation of power from central government to local government? And if so, how?
- Leading on from the previous question, does your party intend on turning the position of County Manger from an appointed position into an elected position?
- What does your party intend on doing to promote gaelscoileanna?
- What other reforms do you intend on bringing in concerning how the Irish language is taught? For instance, to you intend on first promoting oral fluency before written fluency? Currently the opposite is the case, with written fluency and learning-by-rote being promoted before oral fluency.
- Concerning the health service, what are your thoughts on why a country like Ireland, which spends quite a bit per head of population on health, has a far worse service than the likes of France, which spend comparatively less and yet provides a cheaper and more efficient service?
- Currently it’s possible for somebody to get a moderate payrise at work and end up poorer due to the way our tax and benefit system works? What do your party intend on doing to remedy this situation?
- Leading on from the last question, what does your party intend on doing to simplify and unify the tax and benefit system?
- We currently have plentiful natural resources off our coasts in terms of natural gas, &c., however the nation benefits little from the exploitation of these resources, as shown by our reliance on oil and the recent substantial rise in Bord Gais rates, which is being blamed on rising prices abroad. What does your party intend to do so as these resources are used to benefit the Irish economy and reduce our reliance on foreign sources of energy?
- Leading on from the last question, one of those resources is wind power. What does your party intend on doing to promote the construction of offshore wind farms?
Here’s another few:
- There are currently no motorways, no rail service, and very little in the way of dual carriageways along the west coast from Sligo to Cork. Considering that half of the country’s cities are situated there and other major urban centres such as Ennis, Sligo, Letterkenny, and Castlebar, what does your party intend on doing about this?
- The south coast is in an equally pitiful state. There is, after all, no motorway between our capital and second city, which makes travelling between them more difficult and time consuming than it ought to be. Does your party have any plans to remedy this?
- Cork’s Kent station has been neglected for quite some time, leaving it in a disgraceful state. Cork itself could also do with having its old light rail system brought back and expanded outwards into its satallite towns. What’s your party’s policy on this.
- Which do you favour: the expansion of the existing surface Luas system, or instead expanding Dublin’s light rail system using an underground metro system?
- What is your party doing to make sure I don’t have to move out of the North West to get work?
- Is your party going to abolish private taxation via tolls on the M50?
- A major part of the problem with madatory closing times is that it causes a surge of drunk people onto the streets at the same time. This is a recipe for violence, and shifting closing times around does nothing to help it. Does your party intend on scrapping mandatory pub closing time and instead put the decision back in the hands of publicans? How soon will you do something?
I’ll add more as I come up with them. If Damien was to choose a few and post them up, it’s all good. There’s one question I haven’t added here that I intend on writing up as a post. I sketched it out Saturday evening at EP, and just need to edit it first.
1 On September 6, 2006 at 20:06, Topper wrote:
Keith,
Those are all excellent questions. I’m not sure about the moderate pay rise one but i’ll take you word for it - I had though a worker couldn’t come out with less money but would effectively earn less per working hour over a certain theshold when he moves into the next bracket, making working over x hours a week somewhat unbeneficial.
Anyhow, If anybody pesters me at a doorway, i’ll conjure up some of your more potent questions and will let you know what reply (even if it’s only a shocked mumble) that I get.
Good work Batman.
2 On September 6, 2006 at 21:44, Keith wrote:
I was actually talking about the combination of both tax and benefits, rather than tax alone. Actually, it was a conversation you and I had a few months ago that inspired that one.
3 On September 6, 2006 at 22:43, James wrote:
Some very good questions there alright. To pick one thing I wouldn’t quite agree with though is the road from Cork to Dublin... the improvements to this route in the past 3 years have been huge, particularly the Monasterevin bypass M4 extension, the Cashel bypass, the Naas dual carriageway widening and elimination of the traffic lights by Naas, and more recently the Mitchelstown bypass (even though thats a bit of an odd one). It is very evidently ongoing, with another motorway apparently ready to be launched bypassing Fermoy, leaving only Abbyleix as a major bottleneck.
Ideally, it would be nice to have one big motorway all the way from Cork and Dublin, but considering the improvements made in the past few years and those currently in progress or planned for the near future, this question would be far too easy for a politician at your door and wouldn’t make him squirm at all![[smile]](/images/smilies/smile.gif)
4 On September 7, 2006 at 1:55, Keith wrote:
Oh, I agree that that work that’s been done is good, but given the amount of money that’s been floating about in the public coffers, those ought to have been part of plans for a nice big motorway.
And if I want to make my local politicians squirm, I just have to go into full West=On=Track rant mode: works every time.![[smile]](/images/smilies/smile.gif)
5 On September 7, 2006 at 7:25, Bernie Goldbach wrote:
As I see it, the M8 won’t be a four-lane divided highway that connects Dublin to Cork. Its width varies from place to place and for those with autobahn experience, these variances may surprise since many assumed building a motorway meant the money was going to make a high-speed divided roadway with safe overtaking all the way between the major cities. The maps I’ve seen show some limitations to this goal.
6 On December 22, 2006 at 16:11, Emmet wrote:
I think that the infrastructure issue is hugely important, and really, the M8/M7 is only up to scratch on the Dublin side. - It’s not exactly the same quality you’d expect from a Dutch or French road, but it’s quite acceptable.
However, it just stops in the middle of nowhere. That’s the problem.
And we have it relatively good, compared to other towns in Ireland, which has become enormously centralised, for no apparent reason.
If the IDA attracted proper job-creation in larger, but non-Dublin cities, those cities would experience a great boom.
Trying to find a job in IT in Cork? Well, just look through Monster, or the agencies, or the newspaper. There are 10 times as many jobs in Dublin as in Cork, even though the population is about three times greater - 470k vs. 1500k.
Thus, so so many of my compatriots have to work in Dublin.