Irish politicians spent 47% more on electioneering than Ulster counterparts

This weekend marks the first anniversary of the election of the 31st Dáil, an election that attracted 566 candidates to contest the 165 seats (the Speaker/Ceann Comhairle is returned automatically)

The election cost the political parties and candidates a total of €9.27 million, – 16% less than the €11.08 million spent on the 2007 general election, even though 100 more persons contested the election

The following table summarises the spending by party and the cost of each first preference vote:

Party	1st Preference Votes	Total Expenditure€	Spend per 1st Preference Vote €
Fianna Fáil	378,358	2,138,792	5.65
Fine Gael	801,628	3,120,237	4.89
Labour	431,796	1,956,812	4.53
Green	41,039	496,928	5.93
Sinn Fein	220,661	496,928	2.25
People Before Profit	21,551	47,756	2.22
Socialist	26,770	85,124	3.18
Christian Solidarity	2,102	20,113	9.57
Workers P	3,056	11,986	3.92
S Kerry All	4,939	15,347	3.11
Independents	279,459	1,411,176	4.08
TOTAL	2,211,459	€9,277,637	€4.20

 

A total of €2.36 million was spent reimbursing 327 candidates who obtained a quarter of a quota, or more.  This accounted for 28% of the total expenditure during the regulated period – which started the date the Dáil was dissolved on 1 February 2011 until the date of the general election, 25 February 2011.

The cost of each vote in the Northern Ireland Assembly election last year was €2.21, 47% less.  The 218 candidates contesting the 108 seats in the Northern Ireland Assembly spent a total of €1.17 million electioneering during the regulated period – which extended from 25 March 2011 to election day on 5 May 2011.

Right of prisoners to vote in parliamentary elections

Prisoners in Ireland have a right to be registered in the political constituency where they would normally live if they were not in prison. However, they have no right to be given physical access to a ballot box by temporary release or a postal vote or any other way.

If they happen to be on parole, or temporary release, at the time of an election, they are free to vote where you are registered.

Prisoners rights if thye are on remand are the same as if you were a convicted prisoner.

The Electoral (Amendment) Act 2006 provides procedures that enable prisoners to vote by post. If in prison, a prisoner can register for a postal vote in the area that you would otherwise be living in. If they are already registered to vote in that area and wish to be able to vote from prison then a prisoner should fill out a form called Form RFG. If a prisoner is not already on the register then he, or she, should complete Form RFA4 as well.

United Kingdom

The European Court of Human Rights found in 2005 that the UK’s current ban on all serving prisoners from voting contravenes Article 3 of Protocol No 1 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

In June 2010 the Council of Europe’s Committee of Ministers expressed ‘profound regret’ that the ban had not been lifted in time for the 2010 general election. 

The Committee of Ministers said that it would draw up a resolution for action if the UK Government failed to give prisoners the right to vote in time for the elections to the Scottish Parliament, the National Assembly for Wales and the Northern Ireland Assembly in 2011.

On 20 December 2010 Mark Harper MP, the Minister for Political and Constitutional Reform, announced that offenders sentenced to a custodial sentence of less than four years will be given the right to vote in UK Westminster Parliamentary and European Parliament elections, unless the judge considered this inappropriate when making the sentence.

Can Ireland renegotiate its IMF/ECB/EU deal?

The Irish parliament (the Oireachtas) was stood down today.  Brian Cowen the outgoing Taoiseach has been effectively run out of town and will not contest the general election.  The general election will take place on Fri, 25 Feb.  The potential alternative government leaders have been posturing for the past several days about renegotiation the bailout deals. 

It is hard to see this as anything other than empty, vacuous, meaningless, political posturing! The horse has bolted and the stable door is off its hinges. Those with massive ambitions to renegotiate have no leverage.

The bailout deal was not negotiated in the first instance. Those whose interests were threatened arrived in the country, walked the streets, sniffed the air, took the Government by the scruff of the neck and told them that they were no longer in control of the economic stewardship of Ireland. The interest rate was prescribed unilaterally, as were the ongoing detailed quarterly reporting and compliance arrangements. That in a nutshell is how Ireland has been humiliated and joined the line of other can’t cope, won’t cope headless-chicken nations – where ministers abandon their roles abruptly and for no rational or coherent reason.

Apart from the bail-out proposition, over 80% of national debt is due to foreigners. Those foreign interests together with the IMF, ECB, EU and HM Treasury have the Irish authorities under the heel of their jackboot and they have no option but to be as compliant as a prisoner seeking goodwill in return for good behaviour.

The relationship the Irish Government has with these stakeholders is going to provide a salutary lesson in the concept of moral hazard and how its consequences cannot be always shuffled and finessed into the ether, as has been the case for too long within the country.

What the electorate will take a particular interest in is the capacity of the alternative government to bring about change in spheres over which they ought to have some control and leverage – for example, the gigantic scale of fees paid for professional advice and the ancient restricted structures that facilitate these charges; the cost of running the NTMA and its foster children and the transparency of these entities being specimens of how a government and their senior civil servants could demonstrate that their bargaining power and focus is not totally exhausted.

When the Fingleton 2008 ‘€1 million pre-contracted bonus’ has been redeemed the Government will have shown negotiating form. When bankers appear in the criminal courts the country will have demonstrated a sense of resolve and can begin to lay claim to be taken seriously. But blather at the onset of a general election campaign is just that.

Fine Gael to reverse minimum wage cut

Fine Gael’s Michael Noonan TD has unilaterally confirmed that a Fine Gael government will reverse the minimum wage cut imposed by Brian Lenihan in the 2011 Budget. Noonan presumably believes that his solo run will not have moral hazard consequences but he omitted to indicate what Ireland’s rankings in the EU Harmonised Labour Cost Index is likely to be one year after a Fine Gael led government takes office.

The National Minimum Wage Act 2000 set the minimum wage for an adult at €4.40 per hour. The Irish minimum wage increased by over 96% from 2000 to 2009 while GDP per capita in that period had increased by 11.8%.

The restoration of the statutory minimum wage to €8.65 per hour (€17,542 per annum) on the basis that ‘only 3% of the labour force are paid the minimum wage and that its reduction was merely ideological flag waving on the part of Fianna Fáil’.  That begs the question – what happens to the other 97% of the nation’s labour force.

Approximately 3.3% of the labour force received the minimum wage in 2005 when the hourly rate was €7.65; 155,000 were on the Live Register and 91,300 were unemployed.

But in 2006 data from the Revenue Commissioners indicates that 675,000 of those assessed for income tax declared an annual income that was significantly less than the minimum wage before it was increased to €8.30 on 1 January 2007 and to €8.65 on 1 July that year. There are also more minimum wage recipients in the public sector than in the private sector.

Wages and salaries in Ireland dropped by 10.6% in overall terms in the year ended 30 September 2010, before the 2011 Budget was announced.   29% of the labour force do not even make the equivalent of the minimum wage annually and a further 13.5% are unemployed. 

Fine Gael intend to slash tens of thousands of jobs from the public sector and close 145 State bodies.  Who is going to pay the cost of this proposal and what impact will it have on investment, exports, job creation and job maintenance of a scale sufficiently large to reduce chronic levels of unemployment and forced emigration, both documented and undocumented? 

Fine Gael need to clearly articulate the character and stability of living standards and hardship avoidance that will evolve for all citizens under their governance and the relative importance that wealth, welfare and debt will have in underpinning these.

‘Andrews’ – an enduring political icon in Dun Laoghaire

Andrews is one of the most enduring names in the electoral politics of Dun Laoghaire since April 1965 when 29-year old David Andrews made his debut as a Fianna Fáil TD. It was a 4-seat constituency from 1965 until 1981 when it became a 5-seater.  This legacy has survived the leadership of Lemass, Haughey. Ahern and, latterly, Cowen.

David Andrews was succeeded by his son Barry in the 2002 general election when he polled 7,425 votes in his first outing.

During the intervening 46 years the Andrews candidature has secured 121,103 first preference votes in 13 general elections when the cumulative quota was 111,240. The Andrews ticket beat quota in 8 of these elections. Barry Andrews achieved 83% of quota in his maiden outing but in 2007 he achieved 102% of quota – a solid 9,977 first preference votes.

Now that the constituency is once again a 4-seater it would be presumptuous to presume that the Andrews name will not prevail in 2011

 

Election	Barry Andrews	David Andrews	% Quota
2007		9,786	102%
2002		8,939	83%
1997	8,933		99%
1992	13,418		136%
1989	9,987		114%
1987	8,414		91%
1982 - 11	7,643		91%
1982 - 02	7,931		98%
1981	9,471		118%
1977	8,754		115%
1973	10,926		130%
1969	10,292		137%
1965	7,932		105%