Irish Examiner view: Tight race for seats in the European elections
Regina Doherty was chosen as Fine Gael's candidate for the Dublin constituency in the European Parliament election. As there will now be 14 seats available, the competition is going to be very hot for both existing MEPs and those wishing to join them.
With several MEPs having announced they will retire before June’s European elections, numerous grandees — and not-so-grandees, it has to be admitted — are girding their loins ahead of what promises to be numerous battles royale for seats in Strasbourg. Of the 13 sitting Irish MEPs, 10 have either confirmed or strongly hinted they will be running again, but much of the interest will focus on sitting TDs who have announced their intention to stand for election to Europe rather than Leinster House.
Just last weekend, one of them, TD for Dublin Rathdown and minister of state for special education and inclusion Josepha Madigan, was beaten at a Fine Gael selection convention to pick the party’s candidate for the Dublin constituency in the June election. She lost in the vote to current senator and former minister and TD Regina Doherty. She will now, almost certainly, focus on retaining her Dáil seat.
Other TDs hoping to get elected and who have received party nominations include Offaly TD and former agriculture minister Barry Cowen, as well as Labour’s Aodhán Ó Riordáin, currently TD for Dublin North-Central.
As there will now be 14 seats available, with five each from Ireland South and Ireland Midlands North-West and a further four in Dublin, the competition is going to be very hot for both existing MEPs and those wishing to join them.
With all the major parties fielding multiple candidates and numerous independents joining the fray, the ballot can be expected to be a very tight affair.
A presidential pardon in Hungary has sparked a political crisis like none before it in the nearly 14 years since Viktor Orbán rose to power.
So far, the scandal has taken down the country’s president and close ally of Orbán, Katalin Novák, as well as justice minister Judit Varga, as both were directly involved in pardoning a man who helped to cover up a child abuse scandal.
The previously Teflon-coated Orbán, who has been an effective one-man authoritarian show since rising to power in May 2010 for his second and most controlling stint as prime minister, is now running for cover as political outcry and public protests highlight the hypocrisies of his regime.
His Fidesz party has long painted itself as the country’s ‘family-friendly’ leadership, but this scandal has wracked the administration and laid bare its self-declared Christian, family-values agenda. It also exposed just how little power high-ranking officials have under Orbán’s one-man rule.
With focus now switching from Novák and Varga to the prime minister himself, Orbán has displayed the ruthlessness of a dictator in his willingness to dispense of close allies in order to protect himself.
The scandal goes back to last April when Novák dispensed a clutch of presidential pardons ahead of a visit by Pope Francis. On February 2, investigative journalists revealed that one of those pardoned was a man convicted of helping to cover up horrific abuse in a children’s home in the town of Bicske.
Reporting also uncovered the fact that the pardoned man has close links to Hungary’s reformed church and Orbán’s party elite. And while Novák admitted “a mistake” in her resignation speech, she gave no rationale for her decision.
Senior figures within Fidesz have now been accused of scapegoating Novák and Varga and of trying to cover Orbán’s flank, as well as of trying to undermine the independent media — or what’s left of it in Hungary.
But that very media has been instrumental in bringing this case into the light and trying to hold Orbán accountable, even when faced with the full force of the state’s powers and its unabashed anti-LGBT+ policies, which are generally dressed up as child protection measures. That offers a glimmer of hope for those determined to rid the country of a hideous regime.
The circulation of the Atlantic Ocean — including the Gulf Stream, so vital to the Irish climate — is in danger of hitting a tipping point which will be bad news for the global climate system and humanity in general.
A report in the scientific journal said that while it was not yet possible to predict exactly when this might happen, scientists were shocked at the forecast speed of collapse once the tipping point is reached.
Researchers have developed an early warning indicator, using computer models and accumulated existing data, to predict the breakdown of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulating (Amoc), a vast system of ocean currents which is a key metric in global climate regulation.
Their work has indicated that Amoc is already on track for an abrupt shift — something which has not happened for 10,000 years.
Amoc encompasses the Gulf Stream, among other powerful currents, and it is effectively a marine conveyer belt which carries carbon, heat, and nutrients from the tropics to the Arctic Circle, where it cools and sinks into the ocean.
The faster-than-expected melting of Greenland’s glaciers has stymied the effectiveness of the Amoc system. The indications are that it has declined 15% since 1950 and is in its worst state in more than a millennium.
The research indicates a slow decline can lead to a sudden collapse over 100 years, with calamitous consequences. Anyone who thinks Ireland is not vulnerable should reconsider any such assertion.
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