General Irish politics discussion thread

Tax credits, which not everywhere has, make a huge difference to the amount of tax paid versus the headline rates.

Social Democrats reject any alliance with Labour to go into government.

It's pretty obvious that the Social Democrats are a fringe protest party.

There's a place for protest parties in our Dail of course.

I don't see this as the soc dems skipping out. The fact is, ff+FG is too close to the majority to allow the soc dems (or Labour) use the numbers they have to be effective. Ff+FG will know that if a third party threatens to walk they can let them and go get some independents.

If FF + FG were at like 78-80 then labour or Soc Dems would have had great leverage

Now Blanch, you're perfectly aware I'm not a SF voter. I've consistently been very critical of them. While I favour Unification, as that isn't within the power of the Irish government to grant, it would be pretty idiotic to expect it from a SF government. I wouldn't vote for a party who activitely opposed Unification, but broadly speaking it would not be a huge consideration for me when ranking candidates to vote/transfer to.

Certainly one could look at the Greens manifesto and acknowledge the handful of tidbits they achieved and be grateful for that. One could just as easily hypothesise on what they could've potentially achieved if they continued to grow and joined government an election cycle or two later with substantially higher representation.

The purpose of the Opposition is absolutely not just to sit in waiting to form a future government. A strong Opposition is absolutely essential for holding government parties accountable in the current Dail session. The asking of Leader's Questions and bringing forward of Private Members Bills are an important part of our system of government.

My comment was in response to your characterisation of SDs (I acknowledge I could have made this clearer), which I see you've acknowledged the ridiculousness of and walked back from, but the core point stands alone: if the SDs decided to strategically opt out of sacrificing themselves as a FF/FG mudguard, believing that their representation will continue to increase and allow them to eventually sit in government with a much stronger mandate, it would not make them, 'afraid' of sitting in government as you so put.

It's also hard to understand precisely how you think SF should or could even try to form a government considering you also strongly opine that the only two realistic pathways do doing so have a mandate from their voters to not even consider coalescing with SF.

As always, I remain eternally glad that SF remain out of government because I think they're economically incompetent and don't think that promising half the country whatever they want to hear as long as they vote for you sets up a solid basis for governance.

Ya, Gogarty in thst group is odd. He was on radio after election saying he'd be open to joining a grouping as long as those he joined were in favour of green agendas and such. And then he ends up with independent Ireland and the likes of the healy raes. Odd.

Presumably there'll be a rejigging of the technical groups if and when some of the Independents reach an agreement on supporting an FFG government, as I can't see the entire Regional Group being invited to the party, certainly not Aontu…

I'm wondering did the Regional Group come together as a bloc with an eye to government formation, or were they just intended as a conventional technical group and Simon and Micheal took a look at them and decided

All Government supporting TDs would be expected to drop out, although they don't have to. Cabinet members cannot be in a TG; which is why O'Gorman hasn't joined one yet - he's still in the cabinet.

I get that, was wondering what would become of the leftovers, who will presumably number at least the Aontu duo. Hard to see Carol Nolan getting selected either unless the rest of the Regionals insist; I'd imagine FFG would see her as at least as much potential trouble as her former colleague Peadar.

I had assumed Mattie and two Healy Reas were automatic picks for this venture and were only being apparently left out because they didn't happen to be in the Regional Group but FF & FG might prefer the way things appear to be developing, less of an air of gombeenery about the whole enterprise. Maybe give ministerial positions to Harkin & Heneghan and they could put a vaguely 'progressive' gloss on the whole arrangement…