General Election and Government Formation Megathread (see post #1)

Deleted User wrote: »

If you do, justify your explanation.

I don't. I'm a voter since 1992.

Fine Gael have said on the past in their notices that they have had the responsibility of cleaning up mess made by Fianna fail. On inflation / health

Pretty pot and kettle of FG though.

What do you think?

Is it possible, and I ask this because don't really know myself, that if every government seems to be bad and every political party has its problems, then it's possible that we simply have too high expectations of our politicians?

I mean, for a start, anyone who is honest, competent and has integrity probably won't go into politics in Ireland or indeed anywhere. There is simply too much involved in getting elected that has to be paid back for anyone who is completely inscrutable to ever get elected. A classic example is when a local councillor gets a seat in the Dail. You can pretty much guarantee that they will co-opt someone who was on their campaign team to their seat on the council. Then there is the much murkier world of political donations, lobbying etc. Without doing anything illegal such as taking bribes, there are still ways and means of acquiring influence with politicians which, since all parties engage in it, none of them want to complain about it.

Coupled with that, you have the problem that there will often be compromises to be made with the senior civil servants. Ireland isn't like America where a new president can sweep in and fire all the top brass and make a new start. If any politician tried to get rid of incumbent senior civil servants, other than for very clear reasons, there will be mass strikes etc and the government will grind to a halt. The same applies with making cuts - once spending is in place, its very hard for any politician to end it without a backlash.

So really what we have is a system whereby politicians struggle to get elected, requiring the support of many others, and when they get there, they have to pay those supporters back. Coupled with that, there is very little that politicians can actually do. Ministers get to set overall policy, but they don't micromanage their departments and they cannot make sweeping or dramatic changes.

I think this is the reality and so we must, rather cynically, choose the least worst options to be our political leaders. When the children's hospital goes overbudget, it is not like the Minister for Health has been on the site carrying out inspections and individually negotiating contracts with subcontractors etc. So all other things being equal, it may not have mattered who was Minister for Health at the time. True, the Minister decided on the St. James' site rather than Connolly, but again the Minister gets to choose from the options drawn up by his or her department, and at the time there was a more compelling case for it to be in St. James'. In fact, given that the proposals have been floating around since 2006, there have been a series of Ministers for Health who have had to grapple with it.

Thus, if you hold politicians up to a high standard, you will always be disappointed. That is not to say that we have to accept that certain failures and mistakes must be made, but it is useful, when criticising a sitting government, to ask whether any other politician would have done otherwise. FF, SF etc are all criticising FG for the overruns on the hospital site now, but how many of them were criticising them at the time the decisions were made? And if they weren't, one can reasonably infer that had those parties been in power, they would've made the same mistakes.

LuasSimon wrote: »

Not sure where Sinn Fein are going to gain additional seats ?
If the poll figures come to pass it seems they didn’t stand enough candidates but there will be gains in Donegal , Cavan Monaghan . Where else ?

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