Dominic's Blog

Time for us in Labour to say sorry - changing Brendan won't make a difference The recent opinion polls suggest that the Labour Party is only enjoying the support of 1 in every 20 voters. The polls have led to calls from some of our Councillors for a change of Leadership. I don't think that's what we need. I think the issue is with the party, not the Leader. We all remember how the 2016 Irish general election was a bleak one for the Irish Labour Party. Of its thirty three outgoing TDs, only seven were re-elected to the new Dail. The scale of the result was seismic with long-standing TDs such as Joe Costello and Emmet Stagg removed from what were considered safe Labour seats. Newer TDs, such as myself, were badly beaten, sometimes by candidates with no track record of any political involvement or philosophy whatsoever. The reason for the drastic change in the fortunes of the party will be debated for years. I’ll give my own thoughts, for what they’re worth.

The International Affairs Unit of the Labour Party (IAU) hosted a seminar in Drogheda in early July to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Movement. As Chair of the IAU I organised and chaired the event, and welcomed speakers including Party Leader Brendan Howlin, Senator Gerald Nash and Councillor Deirdre Kingston, as well as Colin McGrath MLA, Ethel Buckley of SIPTU and Professor Yvonne Galligan of QUB. The IAU felt that it was important to mark the 50 th Anniversary of the Civil Rights Movement. 1968 saw some of key events of the last century, which have shaped the last fifty years. These worldwide events included the Tet Offensive in Vietnam, the assassination of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy in the US, the Prague Spring in Czechoslovakia and the Student Protests in Paris. Closer to home we saw the start of the Civil Rights demonstrations in Northern Ireland, which called for equality in relation to housing provision. The world of that time was alive

*This article was first published in The Journal on Thursday 21 June 2018. Next week the European Commission (EC) President Jean Claude Juncker comes to Dublin. Juncker retires next year after 5 years at the helm on the EU and 18 years previous to that as Premier of Luxembourg. Among his engagements he will be meeting with An Taoiseach as well as receiving an Honorary Doctorate from the National University of Ireland. The temptation is for his visit to be used as a backslapping, swansong exercise. It should be about more than that. The visit gives us an opportunity for some meaningful engagement with the EU’s top dog. I’m glad that Juncker is also taking time to attend and engage with our National Parliament. Apart from providing some national democratic oversight on his term as President of the Union, members of the Oireachtas can ask him about how he feels his tenure has gone and quiz him on his plans for his final year in office. It’s fair to say that whoever led the

(This article originally appeared in www.thejournal.ie on the15th May 2018) Next year sees the end of the current five year European political cycle and the beginning of the next one. Apart from the election of 750 Members of the European Parliament, we will also see the replacement of the 28 European Commissioners, who serve in the Cabinet of President Jean-Claude Junker. Junker's position is also up for grabs, having announced that he will step down next year. As happened in 2014 the next President will be chosen from the European political group which has the most Members elected to the European Parliament. This Spitzenkandidat process was introduced as part of the Lisbon Treaty, and represents an attempt by the European institutions to provide more direct democracy to the Brussels system. Prior to this process the President was chosen by the Leaders of the Members States. Now their role is reduced, with the intention being that they rubber-stamp the candidate that i

The race is just starting for the European Elections of 2019. Parties across Europe are now in the process of choosing who to put forward as candidates for the European Parliament. Backroom staff have commenced the process of drafting European-wide manifestos. Another key issue for the parties is to decide on who will be the party’s lead candidate for the President of the Commission, the SpitzenKandidat. The current Commission President, Jean-Claude Juncker, is the first Commission President to be chosen based on the SpitzenKandidat system. Introduced as part of the Lisbon Treaty, the Spitzenkandidat concept is that the European-wide political party which gains the highest number of seats at the European Parliamentary elections then has its lead candidate ratified as Commission President by the Union’s Heads of States. Last time around in 2014 the European Peoples Party (EPP) gained the highest number of seats in the European Parliament. Their Spitzenkandidat, Jean-Cla

 It’s 50 years since 1968, one of the most turbulent years in the world’s recent history. It saw the Tet Offensive by the Viet Cong, the assassinations of the Reverend Martin Luther King and of Robert Kennedy, and the continuation of the Civil Rights Movement in the United States. In Europe we saw the Prague Spring in what was then Czechoslovakia. All of these contributed to inspire the world’s oppressed to campaign for change. Closer to home it was a key year in the history of Northern Ireland. The Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association organised its first march from Coalisland to Dungannon and then later that year held a second march in Derry. The marchers set out to highlight non-sectarian demands, such as the end of gerrymandering of constituency boundaries and better housing for all sections of the population. Tragically, subsequent events brought the north to a deeper, darker place for the following decades. It was only when all sides of the conflict saw the futi