Parliamentary Accountability and Reform

The assertion that the Irish parliament, Oireachtas Éireann, or more specifically its lower house Dáil Éireann, is poor at if not incapable of fulfilling its constitutional role of holding the government to account is an established feature of the study of Irish politics. In this chapter, the development of parliamentary accountability is examined in constitutional and comparative contexts. This is achieved by first looking at the idea of accountability and its manifestation within the Westminster family of parliamentary systems, including the Oireachtas. The chapter examines the three principal methods through which executive accountability to Dáil Éireann has been pursued, namely debates, questions, and, more recently, committees. An analysis of the parliamentary reforms that have been proposed and introduced to address perceived accountability deficits is then presented. In a final section, important changes that resulted from the outcome of the 2016 general election for the operation of parliamentary accountability are examined.

The Oxford Handbook of Irish Politics

Ireland has enjoyed continuous democratic government for almost a century, an unusual experience among countries that gained their independence in the twentieth century. But the way this works has changed dramatically over time. Ireland’s colonial past has had an enduring influence over political life, enabling stable institutions of democratic accountability, while also shaping economic underdevelopment and persistent emigration. More recently, membership of the EU has brought about far-reaching transformation across almost all aspects of life. But the paradoxes have only intensified. Now one of the most open economies in the world, Ireland has experienced both rapid growth and a severe crash in the wake of the Great Recession. By some measures, Ireland is among the most affluent countries in the world, yet this is not the lived experience for many of its citizens. Ireland is an unequivocally modern state, yet public life continues to be marked by ideas and values in which tradition and modernity are uneasy bedfellows. It is a small state that has ambitions to carry more weight on the world stage. Ireland continues to be deeply connected to Britain through ties of culture and trade, now matters of deep concern post-Brexit. And the old fault lines between North and South, between Ireland and Britain, which had been at the core of one of Europe’s longest and bloodiest civil conflicts, risk being reopened. These key issues are teased out in this book, making it the most comprehensive volume on Irish politics to date.

Hilton Edwards, Brecht and the Brechtian

The Dublin Gate Theatre Company’s repertory of international, often experimental plays offers perhaps the clearest distinction between the Gate and the Abbey in the mid-twentieth century. A growing body of scholarship focuses on how Hilton Edwards and Micheál mac Liammóir deployed innovative, non-realistic staging techniques and brought to Ireland design elements associated with European artists. The Gate’s international remit can also be seen in its production of plays not merely authored by foreign playwrights, but focused on issues outside the conventional purview of Irish politics, including anti-Semitism and totalitarianism. Throughout his career, Hilton Edwards often sought out non-realistic dramaturgies to critique modern institutions. Some of the plays chosen by Edwards and mac Liammóir were so provocative, socially-conscious, and politically-charged that they challenged the prevailing ethos in Catholic Ireland and incurred the wrath of the Catholic Cinema and Theatre Patrons’ Association. Edwards’ exposure to Bertolt Brecht’s plays, theories, and the 1956 London performances by the Berliner Ensemble prompted not only his production of Mother Courage in 1959 and Saint Joan of the Stockyards two years later, but also his greater willingness to comment on theatre, for example on the radio and in his book The Mantle of Harlequin (1958). Edwards shared with Brecht an awareness of music as integral to performance and a vision of theatre unconstrained by realism and the proscenium arch. Although the Gate repertory of new productions in the post-Emergency era may appear unsurprising, that perspective is informed by the half century in which dramatists such as Arthur Miller and Brecht emerged canonical figures. Hilton Edwards’ direction of Mother Courage and Saint Joan of the Stockyards advanced the Gate’s internationalism and helped to reshape the political nature of Irish theatre. Keywords: Hilton Edwards, Dublin Gate Theatre, Bertolt Brecht, Irish theatre, theatre and politics, Brechtian

J. M. Synge

This is a complete study of the works of the Irish playwright, travel writer, and poet J. M. Synge (1871–1909). A key and controversial figure in the Irish Literary Revival, and specifically in the Abbey Theatre, Synge’s career was short but dynamic. Moving from an early Romanticism, through Decadence, and on to a combative, protesting modernism, the development of Synge’s drama was propelled by his contentious relationship with the Irish politics of his time. This book is a full and timely reappraisal of Synge’s works, exploring both the prose and the drama through an in-depth study of Synge’s archive. Rather than looking at Synge’s work in relation to any distinct subject, this study examines Synge’s aesthetic and philosophical values, and charts the challenges posed to them as the impetus behind his reluctant movement into a more modernist mode of writing. Along the way, the book sheds new and often surprising light on Synge’s interests in occultism, pantheism, socialism, Darwinism, modernization, and even his late satirical engagement with eugenics. One of its key innovations is the use of Synge’s diaries, letters, and notebooks to trace his reading and to map the influences buried in his work, calling for them to be read afresh. Not only does this book reconsider each of Synge’s major works, along with many unfinished or archival pieces, it also explores the contested relationship between Revivalism and modernism, modernism and politics, and modernism and Romanticism.

Social workers, critical theory and the political sphere: addressing political misrecognition and marginalisation in the Republic of Ireland

Despite the traditional social justice mandate of social work, and critical and radical theoretical traditions that pursue egalitarian and just societies, the engagement of the social work academy with Irish politics has been underwhelming at best. While there are abstract analyses that address sociopolitical theory and ideological wrongdoings related to neoliberalist rationality, attention in social work academia to the nuts and bolts of everyday political life in Ireland, such as democratic party politics and electoral representation, leaves much to the imagination. This article therefore pursues a more grounded reading of social justice in Irish politics for social workers. The supporting proposition is that to effectively interject in political misrecognition and marginalisation, social workers must understand the present political state of play. Towards achieving this, Axel Honneth’s theory of recognition aids thematic critical commentary on the literature.

REPRESENTATION OF LORD LIEUTENANTS AND LORD JUSTICES OF IRELAND IN IRISH ODES AND POEMS, 1701–1714

In the late 17th and early 18th century, Ireland experienced a constitutional struggle in parliament, as well as the gradual development of a party system along the English partisan lines. Reflection of those events in the public sphere (primarily in the works of Molyneux and Swift) remains a popular research topic for Irish historians. This article attempts to look at the development of the Irish political system by examining poetic works in support of the chief governors of Ireland: lord lieutenants and lord justices of 1701–1714. Irish poems dedicated to governors were usually similar to English odes, which in turn were influenced by Abraham Cowley’s Pindarics. Irish odes to lord lieutenants of 1701–1711 had significant genre similarities, and most of them were also similar in general means of representing the chief governor. It was of utmost importance for the authors to show the brilliant ancestry of the ode’s hero; perhaps even more important for them was to show the similarity between the viceroy and the monarch, since the former was supposed to represent the latter. There were, however, significant differences between the odes, which were attributed to the shifting context of Irish politics. The odes of 1707 and 1711 are much more embedded in politics than the odes of 1701 and 1703: since at least 1707, the authors were more likely to include lord lieutenants in the context of Irish and British partisanship, while simultaneously emphasizing the loyalty of recipients to Queen Anne in her struggle against parties. The zenith of partisanship in Ireland coincides with the appearance of short poems with some features of an ode in 1710, which closely associate the figure of the lord lieutenant or lord justice with the Whigs or Tories.

Classics and Irish Politics, 1916-2016

This collection addresses how models from ancient Greece and Rome have permeated Irish political discourse in the century since 1916. The 1916 Easter Rising, when Irish nationalists rose up against British imperial forces, was almost instantly mythologized in Irish political memory as a turning point in the nation’s history and an event that paved the way for Irish independence. Its centenary has provided a natural point for reflection on Irish politics, and this volume highlights an unexplored element in Irish political discourse, namely its frequent reference to, reliance on, and tensions with classical Greek and Roman models. Topics covered include the reception and rejection of classical culture in Ireland; the politics of Irish language engagement with Greek and Roman models; the intersection of Irish literature with scholarship in Classics and Celtic Studies; the use of classical allusion to articulate political inequalities across hierarchies of gender, sexuality, and class; meditations on the Northern Irish conflict through classical literature; and the political implications of neoclassical material culture in Irish society. As the only country colonized by Britain with a pre-existing indigenous heritage of expertise in classical languages and literature, Ireland represents a unique case in the fields of classical reception and postcolonial studies. This book opens a window on a rich and varied dialogue between significant figures in Irish cultural history and the Greek and Roman sources that have inspired them, a dialogue that is firmly rooted in Ireland’s historical past and continues to be ever-evolving.

Classics and Irish Politics

This chapter provides a contextualized overview of the contents of the book Classics and Irish Politics, 1916–2016. Rather than summarizing each chapter in order of appearance and according to the subsections of the volume, the introduction draws alternative thematic connections across the different chapters. Strands of interpretation include: the different political implications of Irish authors identifying with Greece, Rome, or indeed Carthage; the imperial contexts of neoclassical architecture; pivotal figures such as Patrick Pearse, W. B. Yeats, James Joyce, and Seamus Heaney; the significance of the Irish Literary Revival and the Irish language; classical reception vs. the classical tradition as a theoretical framework; the Classics in Irish education.

Epilogue

This epilogue offers a meta-analysis across the book’s twenty chapters on Classics and Irish politics through three unifying and recurrent themes: contiguity, affinity, and chance. Contiguity is witnessed in physical spaces, objects, and monuments, but it also functions beyond the material in finding homologous realms between ancient and modern while at the same time respecting differences and acknowledging the challenges inherent in appropriating or translating from one culture into another. Affinity reveals the personal choices and experiences underlying examples of classical reception in Irish culture. Chance inheres in the serendipitous encounters that often lie at the heart of cultural transmission.