Irish Politics Thread

Petition to make "My Lovely Horse" Ireland's Eurovision entry for 2015 turned down.

Awww. The petition, from "The People of Ireland (and interested Britons too)" gained enough signatures to be considered, but the Oireachtas said they coulnd't force RTE to pick it, and that they didn't have the musical expertise anyway.

And it's not eligible anyway, since Eurovision entries have to be first released within a certain number of months of the actual competition, and 18 years is way over that limit.

Belfast shop insists it’s displaying Ivory Coast flag, NOT Ireland flag A bit depressing, to be honest.

edited 28th Jun '14 6:23:26 PM by QueenPanic

At least they called it "Republic of Ireland" and not "Dirty Fenian Traitor Papist Bastards". Every cloud has a silver lining.

MRS BAENFIYELD!

edited 29th Jun '14 3:33:52 AM by Achaemenid

1 million households have "failed" to sign up for Irish Water.

There's another protest on Saturday about it as well.

So, Fine Gael and Labour are pulling compromises left right and centre to get us to sign up for Irish Water, and we aren't budging.

So, who do you think will win the next election? I don't expect the current government to survive 2015.

Okay...

So, the Government, since 1977, has put a bunch of amendments on a certain bill. Today it was ruled that these amendments were unconstitutional, and the Government is scrambling to put emergency legislation in place.


These amendments? Oh, just the ones criminalizing the possession of over one hundred drugs, including legal highs, ketamine, crystal meth and ecstasy.


Selling, manufacturing, importing and exporting are all still illegal, but if you've been "gifted" some, then consume away.

The IRA has been accused of covering up child abuse among its ranks.

Yeah, that's been going on for a few months. It seems the pedos are everywhere, they were just good at covering their asses.

The IRA? Acting like scumbags? Whatever next.

And of course this has been "discovered" by the Government when Sinn Féin is doing better than them in the polls.

At this rate in a few years it's going to be revealed that peace between the IRA and the British was managed when a pedo member of the IRA and a pedo member of the British government realised they both shared a liking for sexually abusing children.

That may be quite possible.

That is one of the darkest things I've ever read on here, mostly because it has the potential to actually have some kind of truth to it. I could easily believe that some of the big players in the Troubles eventually had to watch what they said and did in case things like this started coming out about them. I mean, there's arguments in favour of terrorism and state-supported violence, but child abuse is just inherently selfish and unjustified.

edited 20th Mar '15 4:20:05 AM by QueenPanic

So what's all this about Ireland being a tax haven and Google, Apple, and so on basing themselves there to pay less taxes or something like that...? I don't really understand it all...

edited 18th Apr '15 4:53:29 AM by TheHandle

Major international corporations have a habit of establishing branches that do very little or basically nothing - in extreme cases, so-called letterbox companies (quite literally just a post box or empty office) - in countries with low tax rates. Then they move their assets (on paper) into those "branches" so that the profits they make while working in country A will be taxed in country B, with a significantly lower tax rate. Luxembourg, the Cayman Islands, and Switzeland include some of the more well-known locations of these kind of letterbox companies.

Now, Google has some legitimate operations in Ireland so it's probably not entirely reasonable to assume that they're using those offices just to hide their income from tax authorities in other countries. Ireland has, though, been repeatedly accused of having negotiated a special tax rate with Google (and perhaps certain other companies) to get them to settle in Ireland. If this is true Ireland and Google will both have violated various trade treaties.

One famous case of a company gaming international taxation protocols was Starbucks in the UK. Instead of paying tax they were actually receiving money from the UK as tax rebates because their accounts showed the franchise as making a net loss in the UK before taxes. Closer investigation demonstrated that they had actually used the UK branch to pay various expenses for franchises in other countries so that the UK branch wouldn't be making profits - they preferred to pay lower tax rates in other countries and unload the costs on the UK branch. That, of course, is thoroughly illegal (and immoral).

So much for their marketing themselves as a "fair trade" company...

Isn't there a city in the US where thousands of companies are incorporated simply for the lower tax rates?

Starbucks pulled some reel fuckery, if I remember right they paid something like £1000 a coffee been to their branch in Luxenbourg, who then made all the profit while their UK holding made a 'loss'.

edited 18th Apr '15 12:37:08 PM by Silasw

Is there a far-right movement in Ireland?

No prominent ones. If you're asking because Europe seems to be moving towards the right, Ireland has actually gone in a different direction: Sinn Féin, a left wing party known for it's IRA connections, is gaining popularity.

But how are they towards immigration?

I had to go check, but they're apparently pro-immigration.

It's referendum day everybody! Get off your arses and go vote, because this is gonna happen no matter what the no side says, it's just that it'll be embarassing having to do this on the second go round.

We WILL get a 21 year old president!!!