Sign in. It’s quick, free and it’s up to you.
An account is an optional way to support the work we do. Find out more.
SUSPENDED GREEN PARTY TD Neasa Hourigan has said she remains undecided on whether to back the government in an upcoming no-confidence vote in the Dáil.
Hourigan and her party colleague Patrick Costello had the whip removed from them in May after they voted against the coalition on an issue related to the relocation of the National Maternity Hospital.
Their votes could be key in Tuesday’s no-confidence motion in the Fianna Fail, Fine Gael and Green Party administration.
“I am as yet undecided,” Hourigan told RTE Radio One.
She that government whips had not yet been in contact with her about the confidence vote.
“I would appreciate if I could get some communication from the whips around what is expected when you are suspended.”
The motion, which has been brought by Sinn Féin, comes after the government lost its majority in the Dáil.
Fine Gael TD and former education minister Joe McHugh resigned the party whip after he voted against the government’s controversial Bill to provide redress to homeowners in counties affected by defective building blocks.
The loss of McHugh saw the number of government TDs drop to 79 – one short of a Dail majority.
Hourigan’s insistence that the party whips had not been in contact with her appeared at odds with a claim from Green Party minister of state Pippa Hackett, who said she understood that there had been engagement with the suspended TDs.
Speaking to RTE One, Hackett added: “We have no concerns about next week’s vote of confidence in us, I think this is not surprising from Sinn Féin in the last week of the Dail term to come up with this.”
Last year, Fianna Fáil also lost one of its TDs when Marc MacSharry quit the party.
The three government parties are hoping that he, Hourigan, Costello and McHugh will all back them in the vote.
Taoiseach Micheal Martin is also hopeful of securing the backing of several other independent TDs.
As such, government ministers are confident of winning the vote, despite Labour, the Social Democrats, People Before Profit/Solidarity, the Rural Independents and Aontú all set to support the Sinn Féin motion.
Sinn Féin president Mary Lou McDonald said independent TDs were facing a “big call” on whether they were going to back “bad government” or instead “stand up and be counted” to secure a change in administration.
Fine Gael minister of state Peter Burke branded the motion a “stunt” that would waste Dáil time.
“The Government and Fine Gael are completely focused on tackling the issues that impact on people’s lives, and Sinn Féin’s politically motivated motion will simply take valuable Dáil time away from that work,” he said.
Earlier, McDonald rejected claims her party’s motion was a “stunt” that was unlikely to succeed.
“Democracy isn’t stunts and parliamentary procedures are not stunts,” she told BBC NI.
“The Government has lost its Dáil majority. They’ve been in office for two years and, despite their protestations to the contrary, we have seen a bad situation made worse by their inability to innovate, to deliver, to change and the time has come now and the time is right to call that out.”
She challenged undecided TDs to back no confidence.
“There are others now who have a big call to make and will have a big call to make on Tuesday and it boils down to this – do they believe that this Government is successful? The evidence clearly demonstrates that they are not.
“But those TDs need to now decide will they vote to allow a bad government to continue and for people to suffer, or will they stand up and be counted, back our motion and allow the opportunity for a new government, for a government of change that can actually deliver in the way that people need.”
One issue that could influence how some TDs vote is the government’s plan to tackle climate change.
Rural members are concerned that setting an onerous carbon reduction target for the agriculture setting could devastate the industry.
At the weekend it emerged that Environment Minister and Green Party leader Eamon Ryan will not bring a final plan setting out sectoral emission targets to Cabinet this week as originally planned.
Mr Ryan and Agriculture Minister Charlie McConalogue have yet to agree what requirements will be imposed on the farming sector. They are trying to settle on a target within a range of 22% to 30%.
Hourigan was asked whether her view of the government would be influenced by the ability of the Greens to secure its climate agenda.
She said if the coalition parties could not agree carbon budgets it would represent a failure.
“The effectiveness of the Greens in government of course has an impact on how I feel about voting on all the difficult issues that come across the table and come up in the Dáil,” she said.
“And that of course does have an impact because you want to make sure that you’re doing what you promised your voters that you would do, that you would go in there and you would fight not just for climate change, but climate change that operates in a way that doesn’t hurt the most vulnerable.”
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
I’m an Irish programmer, living abroad, and would like to work remotely for an Irish company. (It’s always a good excuse for visiting home every now and then.) Even with the skills shortage, it seems that no employer is interested.
I’m also in a similar position (living/working in the UK), I like to check in every now and then with job opportunities in Ireland and it’s always 3-5 years industry experience. It seems to be case (to me at least) that you have to move abroad to get your experience before you can come back and apply for these jobs.
I think everyone can agree (having myself being in a similar position) that there is NO SKILLS SHORTAGE.
It is a shortage of desired experience.
Every company requires 3-5 years it seems. None are interested in investing in staff to train/mentor them.
My advice would be similar to other posters for those with no experience: learn how to build a phone app, or try to improve a piece of software from the likes of Sourceforge.net Then put that at the top of your CV.
Exactly – nobody cares if you got 86% in second year in Software Systems – they just want to know what you can do.
I don’t blame companies for wanting experience though – why take on a 22 year old when you can take on a 32 year old? Not like in 30 years time you’ll regret that the older guy is retiring sooner than the younger guy, in the software industry :-P
In my own case I have six years of industry experience with Java, but no one is taking the bait.
Spot on. If you don’t have a github.com account with some interesting projects or contributions, don’t bother.
Software engineering is one of the few jobs that you can MAKE your own experience. As someone who hires developers, I’d sooner hire someone with an interesting github portfolio than someone with more qualifications than you can shake a stick at.
It’s pretty easy to spot people interested in building cool things.
You’re a dying breed Dave. Outside of google very few companies are looking for software developers who are in any way creative. However, they are increasingly looking for staff who are multidisciplinary. Agile is pushing things that way… especially devops.
Software companies want experienced engineers so there is the catch how can you have a constant flow of graduates when they can’t get jobs becuase companies want experienced people.
The other flip side the money is crap starting off.
Money isn’t crap starting off – it’s in line with most other jobs of similar expertise. Companies wanting experienced people is a nuisance though, but I’m not sure how to resolve that.
Software is one of those fields though where you can gain expertise without experience. If your CV has a link to your website, your GitHub profile or some mobile app you’ve worked on they shouldn’t care how long you’ve been working at it.
If you’re passionate about software and have the skills to match, you have the ability to convey this to an employer :-)
Sofware developers are the highest paid graduates of any field. They are even paid more than intern doctors and graduate engineers. Of course those fields catch up fairly quickly.
Is there a list of these vacancies/job specifications?
There is no skills shortage. There is however a bias towards 25-35 year olds, with 5 years experience in a very specific and narrow skill set.
The employers (HR departments) have absolutely no comprehension that a programmer is a programmer, that’s the “skill”, the programming language is usually pretty irrelevant.
If you are over 45 years old, then the employers pretty much ignore you and your wealth of experience.
Irish companies have become very Americanised in the practice of promoting (very) young people to managerial positions, who are then biased towards hiring people their own age.
So what skills are we short of? If it’s technical that’s something to work towards for our universities and students, if it’s language of course it’s going to be easier for people of other nationalities.
So half are picked by Irish residents !
Very poor CV screening, interviewing and technical tests result in a lot of false negatives. I was recently made redundant, and have just been through the process. I picked up a job pretty quickly, but I am genuinely surprised by the lack of opportunities for some of the more junior guys, given that I would be happy to work with all of them again and they have access to great references from everyone at the company.
I constantly see companies that are doing web-development asking about program complexity and solving scalability problems that they more than likely don’t have. If they do have these problems, they are self inflicted by people reinventing the wheel rather than using something off the shelf. Another thing I noticed is the asking of questions assuming knowledge of specific tools. Web summit insisted on degrees from Universities only, with a clear bias towards Trinity college.
I personally would prefer to hire someone with less experience of these kind of things, and the simple ability to do simple things correctly and take direction. I don’t think I would have a problem hiring in the current environment.
Given that we are in the middle of a tech bubble, we should not spend too much time trying to correct these problems at the expense of the exchequer and let the companies who have the problem deal with these self inflicted problems themselves.
I’m an Irish IT graduate with over 10 yrs experience. I’ve taken time out to raise my child. I’ve been trying to get back to work for the last couple of years & companies are unwilling to even respond to my CV. I understand the concepts, am easily retrained & willing to work. It’s not a shortage of skills, I think it’s that companies want an exact set of skills & aren’t willing to re-train people. I know I’m not the only one in this position.
You’re right. as an employer, it’s not efficient to hire someone that will take weeks or months to retrain. The onus is on you to skill up. Not your employer. Ad I’ve stated before, in IT, it’s very VERY easy to upskill and create your own experience in the form of personal projects.
I’m still shocked at those who don’t understand this. Nobody owes you a job and being out of work for 10 years means you’re practically starting from scratch anyway. But that doesn’t matter, it’s very easy to start and build something yourself to modernise your skill set.
I’d sooner hire a 17 year old who just finished their leaving with a decent github profile then someone with 3 masters and no effort put into keeping themselves relevant.
Too few jobseekers actualky put themselves in the shoes of a potential employer.
have your say