I have received the below invite to a conference on the above theme. It will be held June 22nd in TCD. Full details below. It looks excellent. I certainly plan to be there.
The conference is entitled: ‘Are Our Institutions Fit for Purpose? Political Reform in the Republic of Ireland’. The conference will seek to provide an accessible analysis of several of our current political institutions, as well as laying out and debating options for future reform.
The goal of the conference is to bring a diverse group of people together – including researchers, political practitioners, political commentators, members of the civil service, and members of the public, who share a common interest in seeing that Ireland’s political system is working efficiently to serve the Irish people, in order to share their insights and ideas on political reform.
The conference will be structured into three sessions, each of which will deal with a specific area of the political system, and will close with a round table discussion involving participants from all three sessions
chaired by Aine Lawlor, RTE Morning Ireland. Each session will include short presentations from expert speakers, who have published research on the institution being discussed, and structured discussion from
respondents, who have intimate knowledge of that institution from the worlds of politics and journalism. The sessions and roundtable will also dedicate time to questions and discussion from the audience.
A copy of the conference programme and further details can be accessed at http://irishpoliticalreform.wordpress.com/
(Our permanent website www.politicalreform.ie will be live later in the week.) The conference is open to the public and we very much encourage active audience participation.