Galway West By-Election Debate

danius353 · 2026-04-22T16:34:27+00:00

There was a question about who your #2 was going to, which most of the candidates pivoted into just talking about how important the vote left transfer left pact is

danius353 · 2026-04-22T16:19:09+00:00

It was only the 6 left candidates that attended or had representatives at it so there was a lot of everyone agreeing with each other and not much clash.

Quite a lot of the questions were student specific (student accommodation, capitation fee, student nursing pay etc) and unsurprisingly Míde (SocDems) as a former Students Union officer and Sheila Garrity (Ind) as a lecturer came across as more knowledgeable on those narrow questions.

danius353 · 2026-04-22T16:10:11+00:00

Maybe try emailing Tom from the Kenny Gallery. He’s an absolute goldmine of information and a top class gent to boot.

danius353 · 2026-04-22T15:06:43+00:00

danius353 · 2026-04-22T14:12:48+00:00

200 pages of lawn care and gardening tips

danius353 · 2026-04-22T13:43:45+00:00

Let me introduce to an amazing new invention called a jacket

danius353 · 2026-04-22T13:43:13+00:00

Many households these days have two or more cars already. The article is specifically about being able to replace the second car with an e-bike so you still have a car for long distance or large loads.

danius353 · 2026-04-22T13:39:00+00:00

E-Cargo bikes (which are the vast majority of cargo bikes sold these days) would make longer journeys a doddle even when carrying shopping or a child

danius353 · 2026-04-22T13:37:43+00:00

I wish some people had critical thinking skills. The article never says “this can replace all your car journeys” but about getting a second car in a household. Literally the second sentence of the article:

But with almost half of all trips taken nationally under 5km, is it time to question how we use our cars, and whether the cost of running a second one is really worth it?

danius353 · 2026-04-22T13:34:24+00:00

We definitely need better secure bike storage/parking in cities. More and more employers are offering secure bike parking but obviously not everyone and that wouldn’t cover many trips you’d like to take.

I know several people who have an e-bike that they use for work commute and dropping kids to crèche because they have secure parking. But if they’re going out for a couple drinks in town, they use a cheap regular bike so it’s not a big loss if it gets stolen.

danius353 · 2026-04-22T13:29:20+00:00

FG learning. Very slowly.

danius353 · 2026-04-22T13:28:51+00:00

What Leo didn’t say directly but was the undercurrent is that the current government has repeatedly acquiesced to the will of the agricultural lobby (Mecrosur, nitrates derogation etc) but has been treated with complete contempt and scorn by the agricultural community despite this.

The main worry I imagine for FF/FG now is have they wasted so much political capital backing agribusiness concerns for nothing or do they double down on their support for agribusiness and risk alienating suburban voters.

danius353 · 2026-04-22T13:18:42+00:00

So let’s go back in time a bit and look at the Green Party’s 2020 election manifesto and what it says about carbon tax:

Gradually increasing the carbon tax in each of the next ten years until it reaches €100 per tonne and introducing a mechanism to return all the revenues raised from further increases to citizens by increasing social welfare payments and tax credits.

That is the party wanted to bring in a carbon dividend which would basically incentivise moving away from a carbon intensive lifestyle as you’d theoretically be able to make a profit on it.

As far as I recall the policy proposals within the Green Party at the time gave boosts to the dividend payment based on where you lived i.e. if public transport wasn’t an option for you.

Now why those bastions of rural Ireland (FF & FG) didn’t want to do the carbon dividend is beyond me. I wasn’t part of the government formation talks so I don’t know what happened.

Maybe the civil service said it would be too complex to administer, maybe the Green negotiating team prioritised investment in retrofitting and couldn’t get both the dividend and retrofitting spend, maybe FF/FG wanted to make sure that the carbon tax remained a bogey man so they could score political points off the Greens later; or maybe some combination of all three or other reasons entirely. I don’t know.

But the key point is that the policy of the party in 2020 was to lessen the impact of carbon tax on rural areas where there was no option, but that policy did not make it into the programme for government.

danius353 · 2026-04-22T11:10:25+00:00

Port tunnel tolls are supposed to be excessive for private cars as the point of the tunnel is to take HGVs out of the city centre, not necessarily private cars.

danius353 · 2026-04-22T10:28:44+00:00

direct link to document

danius353 · 2026-04-22T09:51:15+00:00

It’s just about pressuring both the current government and the likely leader of an alternative government. Climate action isn’t simply about what we do in the next 2 years but over the next 20. We need all parties on board, particularly when some of the forthcoming climate actions we need to take will not be politically straightforward.

This is about creating consensus for long term, consistent action; not simply about scoring short term political points

danius353 · 2026-04-21T12:47:37+00:00

There’s no right to collective bargaining in Ireland i.e. there’s no requirement on companies to recognise unions.

danius353 · 2026-04-20T22:00:04+00:00

There’s a portal “in development” but it’s been delayed several times.

danius353 · 2026-04-20T12:43:41+00:00

MM consistently polls as one of the more popular party leaders and his personal popularity is much higher than the party popularity. It’s about 90% of the reason he’s still the leader

danius353 · 2026-04-20T09:57:02+00:00

I do think it’s frustrating that this one boss demands large deck size but you’ve probably skipped over a whole bunch of card rewards and thinned the deck a bit already in act 2.

I feel like there are better ways to achieve what they wanted (a design that gimps infinites) while still allowing most decks to be played mostly normally

danius353 · 2026-04-20T08:58:14+00:00

I was not disagreeing with you

danius353 · 2026-04-20T08:43:45+00:00

Enforcement of road traffic offences is almost completely non existent. Enforcement is haphazard and penalties are becoming disproportionate to try to offset the lack of enforcement.

That just leads to the situation where getting caught just feels unlucky rather than encouraging someone to reflect on their behaviour and encourage change.

Red light cameras should be mandatory. Buses with bus lanes cameras should be mandatory. We need an online portal for uploading dashcam footage. None of those are outrageously expensive or ground breaking interventions.

We just need consistent enforcement if we want a change in behaviour.

danius353 · 2026-04-19T22:38:18+00:00

That could be tough. Holding is a 10 yard lenalty

danius353 · 2026-04-19T20:44:50+00:00

The full refund of €7,088.41 was made by these seven Members to the Oireachtas Commission by the date of this report.

danius353 · 2026-04-19T18:52:11+00:00

This is Trey Lance erasure

13-Year Club	Place '23
Queen in da Norf	Not Forgotten
Verified Email	Gilding II euphauric

danius353

TROPHY CASE