Here we have a problem. While nobody, save the special ones, will disagree when it's pointed out that FF looked after their friends when they were in Government, it doesn't mean that they have no place to point out when FG/Labour do the very same thing. In fact, as an opposition party it is their duty to point it out. That they themselves did it when they were in government doesn't lessen the impact of the FG/Labour government doing it now too.Originally Posted by Grumpy Jack
A poster of some consequence...
Off to the Dáil bar this evening I bet for the FG/Lab gang
If you don’t stand for something you will fall for anything
+1
Meanwhile SF provides the real opposition:
If you tremble with indignation at every injustice, then you are a comrade of mine.
Oh so we should sit back and lap it up like the other gobsh1tes????+1
Meanwhile SF provides the real opposition:
If you don’t stand for something you will fall for anything
I believe they took on an amendment from Sinn Fein on the Oireachtas enquiry referendum.
Beyond that I don't think there is that much, but yeah if the opposition do come up with a good idea, they should take it on and I hope they would.
I wouldn't force them to listens to the speeches in the Dail though, most of them are very boring and they can get the key points by reading The Times and/or press releases. I wouldn't take it as an insult either, if anyone watches the Dail regularly it is very boring and they do have better things to do with their time.
"Give us the future, we've had enough of YOUR past, Give us back our country, to live in, to grow in and to love..."
People leave the chamber with good reason.
1. The acoustics are bad so if you want to follow the debate the best place to do so is in your office, where your monitor has a direct feed from the chamber (and the Seanad, and committees, and other world parliaments, and can also watch BBC News, Sky, CNN for reactions) and you get a quality sound rather than an echoey sound in the chamber.
2. The chamber is very large, and so to heat it the boiler has to be put high. But that can leave the chamber very stuffy and uncomfortable. George Lee on his first day complained about seeing a TD fall asleep in there. A few debates later Lee himself fell asleep with the heat and stuffiness. So again it is much better to follow the debate in your own office on the monitor than physically sit in there, stuffy, sweating and not being able to hear the sound clearly.
3. Since the introduction of television cameras, studio-type lighting has been installed. From the public gallery it doesn't look much. But if you ever see into the chamber at ground level the light is dazzling. As with studios, that adds a lot of heat to the place.
4. What happens in the chamber is known as a plenary session. Most parliamentary work internationally these days is no longer done in plenary but in committees. Committees meet at the same time as plenaries. I remember once hearing someone complain about there only being 9 people in the chamber once. What they didn't know was that 114 were attending committee meetings. Many of the remainder were off in the library or on the internet researching stuff for a speech they were preparing. Others were meeting people who came in to meet them. So just because someone is leaving the chamber does not mean they are going to the bar or the restaurant. They could be going to committees, or on other related business.
5. A written form of the debates goes on the website within an hour or so of the words being said. So if they are doing something else, they can look at the unproofed version of the debates (known as the 'blacks' because in the old days they would be printed off, and would be so hot of the presses your hands would get black with the ink). People often read the blacks to follow what happened earlier in the chamber.
6. If you really want to see the actual broadcast of a debate, you can request the debate be rebroadcast on an empty channel on the monitor. Newbies don't realise that if someone requests a debate be reshown it is shown on every monitor. TDs have been known to try to look at someone's speech with an idea of ambushing them on something they said. The trouble is, the speech also comes up on the monitor of the person they want to ambush. So that kinda lets the cat out of the bag - as they know someone is having their speech replayed.
7. Some Oireachtas members tape debates so they can play them back themselves.
The days when everyone physically has to be in a parliamentary chamber are long long gone. Since the 1980s most parliaments have had sound broadcasting and since the 1990s television broadcasting of them. So nowadays only a tiny number of people sit in chambers most of the time. Most parliamentarians follow the debates on monitors in the office. They only turn up when their leaders are speaking and when he or she is finished, go back to the office to follow the rest of the debate.
I hope that explains how it works.
Minister Michael Noonan told Michael McGrath tonight on Primetime that he would review a budget item in relation to the Disability Benefit cuts. I do not have the full story as I was mainly watching the football on TV3.
"No warning can save a people determined to grow suddenly rich." - Lord Overstone.
"hadn't met any Irish people that were afraid of anything" - Christine Lagarde. 2008.
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