GE16 - It's totally broken.

Politics
1

In case you were in doubt, the system is truly and utterly broken on this isle… if you’re not on the inside of course. BD

Why do I believe this?

I had noticed a lot of councillors who are not so long elected running in GE16. Now with so many potentially elected as TD’s, I thought to myself there’ll be a ton of by-elections, but no. Co-Option. I’d never heard of it until I stumbled on this politics.ie thread - politics.ie/forum/elections/ … -them.html

Healy Raw’s daughter get his council seat

40+ seats all potentially for the family. :open_mouth:

2

It’s always been thus.
Have you ever heard of a Council by-election?

3

No I hadn’t really paid that much attention and now I know whit’s been fairly low key… This is really pivotal thing. It’s designed to be the graduate program for these successful failures who can out Dynasty the common good.

It’s a one part of the means of mediocrity that was until yesterday, totally invisible to me.

4

It’s tradition, created by politicians themselves.
***If a councillor dies, resigns or becomes disqualified from being a member of the council, the vacancy is filled by co-option. The political party who originally nominated the member who caused the vacancy nominates a new member and the council then passes a resolution to appoint the new member. citizensinformation.ie/en/go … illors.htm*l

When it’s an Independent, there are supposed, upon election, to put the name of their co-optee in a sealed envelope, which is opened when the vacancy arises. Then they need the rest of the Council to approve the new councillor.

5

and acquiesced to by the electorate.

6

And they all do it. Who got Joe Higgins Dail seat when he was elected to Europe?

7

Other way around, I think (or it happened more than once). Paul Murphy became an MEP when Higgins got a Dáil seat.

And then ran an anti-Lisbon campaign with the slogan “Is this democracy?”. Irony not his strong suit, obviously.

8

meh, in a list system there’s an alternate - it should take the personality out of things - Obviously a shame it’s yer man’s daughter but obviously the electorate of Kerry are OK with that sort of thing (Toireasa Ferris and IIRC a Spring being another example)

10

There are loads of Councillors and they regularly pop their clogs or go off and get elected to other things. We would be broke if we were constantly running bye-elections. They have feck all power anyway because of our centralised system and because of the transfer of many powers to the County Manager.

11

a by-election also favours the larger parties. If a smaller part wins a seat at an election it is one of the last seats. If that canditate moves on during the term the smaller party would loose the representation to one of the bigger guys. So it is not a simple as jobs for the boys, their is some grey here.

13

Ah but it’s bootcamp for the dynastic party political kiddies with pocket money and the beginnings of airs and graces.