What would you do?

RightHalfBack

A good mix of people on here, So if you were leading a political party in Ireland into the forthcoming Election what would your 5 or 10 point plan be?

Still working on my own,

Also will be more enjoyable if everybody can list their ideas and accept & respect the ideas of others.

We may have more in common than we think...

enigma_b17

Well I'd have to sit down and think about it....but off the top of my head i've got a few points.

- Recovering the economy / cancelling out the debt
- Job creation and preventing more emmigration
- Returning to the people.


In the next 3-4 years were lookin at high taxes etc vat and all that (i.e. leave as they are). Use that aswell as cuts in the government, i.e. completely and utterly obliterating the Salaries of td's and government officials....especially whatever pensions they are enrolled to get. Boost spending to health services (once it's reformed)

Over the next 2 years it is estimated that I think something in the region of 300k of the youth in this country are going to be forced to emmigrate to another country looking for work. Resolving that would be an extremely important element to it all, the more people that leave the higher taxes are going to have to be...simple logic.

If we have been able to resolve these problems...then I would start giving back to the people. All the last government has done is take from the people in as many ways as they could. All they have done is increase income tax, increase vat, add stealth charges etc so much **** that we don't need. When the financial crisis is resolved a priority would be returning peoples art of living.

RightHalfBack

ill start with an easy enough one..

I would introduce a "pub bus" serivce in Rural areas. A local pub or group of pubs could go into partnership with a local bus driver. The bus driver would then operate a regular & flexible service to pub customers in the locality.

Would be funded by Goverment, the publican(s) and the customer would pay a small fee, say 2 euro per trip.

Payback on this would be,

Less rural pubs closing
Less drink driving
More vibrant local towns & villages
Cutdown on rural isoloation & mental health issues resulting from this.

gandalf

Here are some of my ideas.

Political Reform

• Abolish the Seanad.
• Reduce the number of TD's to around 100.
• The elections for the Dail to be fulfilled against a total list system.
• Maximum term in office of 3 Dails for all TD's.
• TD's only allowed to deal with national issues.
• If a TD stands down or dies his party replaces them with the next person on the list submitted before the last general election avoiding by-elections.
• TD's, Ministers & Taoiseachs pay to be brought back to more realistic levels.
• Dail Holidays reduced to 1 month in the summer, a week at Christmas and 10 working days for the rest of the year.
• Pensions only become active at retirement age and only one state pension can be held.
• Reduce the number of councils to around 5 or 6.
• Councillors to become fulltime paid positions at average wage levels.
• Any state employees that become a TD or Councillor will have to relinquish their position so it becomes available to fill with a new employee.
• Council elections to occur every two years.
• Only Councillors are allowed deal with local issues, any local issue referred by a TD will be put to the back of the queue.
• Any TD who consistently meddles in local affairs be banned from going forward for re-election.
• All political positions subject to a vouched expense scheme with full receipts required.

Public Service Reform

• Aggressive Reform of the Public Service with empathises on removing duplication across the board beginning with the HSE.
• A commitment to reduce back office costs through efficiencies before any tax increases are brought in to ensure the tax payer is getting value for money.
• Proper flexibility to be brought into the service with the same working terms and conditions that exist in the private sector. Promotion to be awarded to the best candidate and not the one longest in line.
• Teachers performance to be rated yearly and that rating to be available to parents to check in consultation with the headmaster. Three bad reviews results in termination of that teachers contract no matter what their seniority.
• Aggressive Reduction of Quangos to the bare minimum.

Amtmann

RightHalfBack wrote: »

ill start with an easy enough one..

I would introduce a "pub bus" serivce in Rural areas. A local pub or group of pubs could go into partnership with a local bus driver. The bus driver would then operate a regular & flexible service to pub customers in the locality.

Would be funded by Goverment, the publican(s) and the customer would pay a small fee, say 2 euro per trip.

Payback on this would be,

Less rural pubs closing
Less drink driving
More vibrant local towns & villages
Cutdown on rural isoloation & mental health issues resulting from this.

Of course if you really wanted to kill all these birds with one stone (plus a good few more), you'd prohibit 90% of people from building one-off houses willy nilly all over the place. That would contribute to the vibrancy of villages, I can assure you.

Lockstep

Here's a few.

-Go on a cutting spree with the Quangos. Serious reform needed here.

-Slightly increase the effective rate of income tax, cut VAT a bit.

-Create a stimulus package based around improving infrastructure. With so many students being taught in prefabs, use some of the out of work construction sector to get involved.

-A very slight wealth tax. Few percentage points or so.

-Institute a new minister for public sector reform, charged with a comprehensive review of the public sector. Maintain frontline staff but rationalise the admin structure. Some of this can be done via the transfer of the over-adminned health sector and transferring some of them to the education sector where too many admin staff are trained educators. Likewise, bring in admin staff to policing to free up gardaí.

-Institute an earn and learn scheme for new graduates, basically allowing them to claim the dole while undertaking internships.

-Make Irish an optional subject at second level, but make the Irish Diploma course compulsory for university students; basically, the diploma can be done at 3 different levels (beginner, intermediate, advanced) and is done by 3 hours a week for 2 years, alongside the first 2 years of the undergrad degree.

-Seriously amend the Constitution, which would be needed for the following.

-Divide the country into different regions; Munster, Leinster, Dublin and Connaught-Ulster. Each of these is to be given it's own regional version of the Dáil with devolved powers over things like health, education, housing and so on. USe this to reduce the numbers of TDs.

-Reform the Senate into a body that is directly elected, with 2 senators per country. Make the senate mainly concerned with reviewing the Dáil and engaging in political reform and tribunals.

-Cut TD pay to €70k a year, cut senator pay to €50k

-Implement a list system for the Dáil. Increase sitting days for the Dáil by 30-50%

-Nationalise the offshore energy reserves we have, use the money gained and put it into a Norwegian style national fund.

-The school year needs to be significantly lengthened. We're not rural enough to justify our short school year.

-No state payment of private school teachers. End the subsidy of private schools.

-Reduce the Back to Education requirement to six months.

-Legalise the likes of marijuana.

-Enforce white collar crime properly. The legislation is there (apart from weaknesses in whistle blower legislation and the Freedom of Information Act). It's shameful that we've never had someone jailed for white collar crime in Ireland.

-Create a third tax band for high earners.

-Invest in green energy as done in Portugal: wind and wave energy have a lot of potential.


-Copy Estonia's system of a nationwide broadband network. Our current levels are shameful.
-Privatise marriage. Each religion has it's own choices as to what marriage involves and the state isn't to interfere. State involvement is limited to a civil union, open to all genders and sexualities.

-Strengthen ties with the BRIC countries. Appoint trade ambassadors to each one and encourage them to each send a similar representative to here.

leincar

gandalf wrote: »

Here are some of my ideas.



Political Reform

• Abolish the Seanad.
• Reduce the number of TD's to around 100.
• The elections for the Dail to be fulfilled against a total list system.
• Maximum term in office of 3 Dails for all TD's.
• TD's only allowed to deal with national issues.
• If a TD stands down or dies his party replaces them with the next person on the list submitted before the last general election avoiding by-elections.
• TD's, Ministers & Taoiseachs pay to be brought back to more realistic levels.
• Dail Holidays reduced to 1 month in the summer, a week at Christmas and 10 working days for the rest of the year.
• Pensions only become active at retirement age and only one state pension can be held.
• Reduce the number of councils to around 5 or 6.
• Councillors to become fulltime paid positions at average wage levels.
• Any state employees that become a TD or Councillor will have to relinquish their position so it becomes available to fill with a new employee.
• Council elections to occur every two years.
• Only Councillors are allowed deal with local issues, any local issue referred by a TD will be put to the back of the queue.
• Any TD who consistently meddles in local affairs be banned from going forward for re-election.
• All political positions subject to a vouched expense scheme with full receipts required.

Public Service Reform

• Aggressive Reform of the Public Service with empathises on removing duplication across the board beginning with the HSE.
• A commitment to reduce back office costs through efficiencies before any tax increases are brought in to ensure the tax payer is getting value for money.
• Proper flexibility to be brought into the service with the same working terms and conditions that exist in the private sector. Promotion to be awarded to the best candidate and not the one longest in line.
• Teachers performance to be rated yearly and that rating to be available to parents to check in consultation with the headmaster. Three bad reviews results in termination of that teachers contract no matter what their seniority.
• Aggressive Reduction of Quangos to the bare minimum.

The only thing I would disagree with and then only slightly is the list system. You suggest a total list system whereas I would go 50/50, constituency/list. Otherwise brilliant.

RightHalfBack

Really great replies, keep them coming..

I wish i could get a list like those off every candidate in my constituency.
Of course that would mean it would be very easy to judge their performance at the end of the term..

the_syco

Tremelo wrote: »

Of course if you really wanted to kill all these birds with one stone (plus a good few more), you'd prohibit 90% of people from building one-off houses willy nilly all over the place. That would contribute to the vibrancy of villages, I can assure you.

Agreed. If they are from far away they can stay far away :P, but if they're from close by to the land that they're trying to build on (eg: land given to them by family), they'd be in that 10%.