General Irish politics discussion thread

The national level polling doesn't always translate well into individual constituencies. It absolutely provides a useful overall guideline, but the major political parties all have far more granular data thats more useful at predicting how difficult (or easy) a candidate's re-election campaign will be.

Its a problem with a lot of seat predictions you'll see in Irish political analysis - people take the national polling and extrapolate it to every constituency evenly, when there can be a lot of local variation.

This all applies particularly for this upcoming election which had the boundary redraws happening recently. Lots of TDs had their core vote areas radically altered, for better or worse, which they're very aware of. They already know if they've likely gained or lost a few thousand votes based on the voting record of those local areas, which will obviously have a huge impact come election time.

Lemass wanted to name the party The Republican Party in 1926

This will pptentially be the biggest dilemma for the party after the next election.

Gannon managed to have the worst attendance of any TD in the Dail in 2021 despite living in walking distance of it, and fradulently claim his travel expenses while he was at it. If hes also part of the SocDems wing desperate to keep them out of government hes really not doing them much good.

Serves them right. They all lost their jobs because they went woke and "elected" a gay half Indian leader who they thought was bright and would lead them to electoral success despite the fact that their members overwhelmingly voted for Coveney. Instead Leo Varadkar's electoral record has been nothing but appalling for FG and they're all forced to throw in the towel and leave as they know there's no ministerial mercs coming down the line for them. Also LV tends not to promote competent experienced/older politicians but gobshites like Donohoe, McEntee and 19 covids Harris.

Again, what fraud did he carry out?

All 'soft left' leaders talk that talk, from Pat Rabbitte saying he wanted to see FF put out of office for a generation to this famous contribution by John Gormley

but when FF and/or FG make them an offer they usually find themselves unable to refuse....

"Fraud is an intentionally deceptive action designed to provide the perpetrator with an unearned gain"

If I skipped half of my work days in a year, and deliberately overclaimed for expenses while I was doing so, that I was then later forced to pay back, my employer would absolutely fire me for fraud. As would I would wager almost every single private sector employer in the state.

Its absolutely horrendous performance from a sitting TD, and theres no way he deserves to retain his seat.

Gannon claimed more travel expenses than he was entitled to, and was subsequently forced to return money he had claimed.

He claimed €28,270 in travel expenses that year, to commute circa 2km in Dublin. A short walk.

And he did this while maintaining literally the worst attendance record in the Dail, while living in the second closest to the Dail constituency in the country.

Theres absolutely no justification for all of that, he deserves to lose his seat in the next election.

And, again, if I skipped work for half of the year, and inflated my expenses to the point of being forced to repay what I had claimed, I would absolutely be fired for fraud. As would almost any employees in this country. We should _at the very least_ be holding our politicians to the standards of the average worker.

Again, i don't know why you insist on constantly lying and defaming a person. He didn't claim travel expenses. Every TD is given a travel allocation and if they don't reach the requirements to retain it they are expected to pay it back.

If your work place provided you with a travel expense of €9,000 and said that you need to come into the office 120 days to retain the full amount, otherwise you need to give back 1% for every day you come in below 120 then of course you wouldn't be sacked for fraud if you went into work for 100 days that year. Its ridiculous to even try and claim you would be.

I gave the definition of fraud in response to you, which Gannon's behaviour clearly falls under.

I never mentioned any SF TDs? But any TD that fradulently claims expenses should lose their seat. In the UK they actually punished politicians for this, as we should do.

He claimed travel expenses. Some TDs don't claim them at all, or only claim a small amount, Gannon claimed €28,270 of them in a single year to commute a 2km round trip. While only attending his work place for less than 50% of the work days that year, literally the lowest of any TD in the Dail. Despite living one of the shortest distances away.

Are you trying to claim this is reasonable behaviour? Do you think this is a fair amount of travel expenses to claim from the Irish tax payer, given the distances involved? Do you think it actually cost him that much to travel to work, ie it wasnt' a fradulent claim?

Gary Gannon may have other issues that restrict him. Don't be jumping to simple conclusions like, laziness;

I gave the exact definition of fraud. And listed his exact actions, which it applies to.

Do you think he non-fraudulently accumulated travel expenses of €28,270, in one year, commuting from Dublin Central to Leinster House?

For 108 days of attendance, commuting approximately 2km each way. That works out to €130 for each 2km trip that he billed to the tax payers of Ireland.

How exactly do you think this is in any way reasonable or justified? Or even possible to achieve non-fraudulently?

I'd genuinely love to know how its possible to legitimately rack up travel expenses of €65 per km. The already generous civil service mileage rate for travel of that distance is 41-51cent per km, less than 1/100th of what he claimed.