The Taskforce on Active Citizenship are now starting their nationwide tour where they’ll be having discussions with people on how to be an active citizen. They started in Dublin today but will also be in the following places:
- Tuesday 19th September 7p.m. – 9p.m. Monaghan, Four Seasons Hotel
- Wednesday 20th September 7p.m. – 9p.m. Sligo, Sligo Park Hotel
- Tuesday 26th September 7p.m. – 9p.m. Galway, Radisson SAS Hotel
- Thursday 28th September 7p.m. – 9p.m. Cork, Kingsley Hotel
- Monday 2nd October 7p.m. – 9p.m. Tullamore, Tullamore Court Hotel
Email them on info < at > activecitizen < dot > ie or telephone: o1 6194520 / 4558 / 4330 to book a place. They still have their consultation open until September the 29th.
I mentioned it before but you can fill in their consultation online or email in answers to the questions or even print it off and post it in. The below are the questions that they’re asking:
- For you, what does it mean to be an ‘active citizen’?
- Do some people feel excluded from active citizenship and why?
- Do you feel strongly part of a community – location, parish, sports association, language/cultural group, trade union or corporate interest etc?
- Do you believe that with other people in the area where you live you can make a difference to the quality of life of people around you?
- How can active citizenship help to include newcomers in a changing Ireland?
- From your experience, is there less volunteering and civic engagement than in the past? What do you think are the main reasons for this?
- How do you think people could be encouraged and supported to be more active citizens?
- How could we further develop a sense of active citizenship amongst young people in Ireland?
- What role can education play in promoting active citizenship and how?
- What steps do you think can be taken to promote greater participation in elections and other forms of civic engagement?
- How do you think older people can be encouraged and supported to participate more actively in community and society?
- What role can the media, including the internet and other new technologies, play in promoting active citizenship?
- What role can the corporate sector (including public sector organisations) play in promoting active citizenship? How can this be encouraged and supported?
- What types of support do communities require to increase levels of participation and involvement?
- How can communities be encouraged to identify the unique strengths and skills of their own members and to draw upon them for their own benefit?
- How can Government – including Local Government – work more effectively with communities to help them organise effectively?
- What are the main challenges in establishing and running a community or voluntary organisation in Ireland today?
- Does your organisation, or do organisations in your sector, find it harder to recruit and keep volunteers than in the past? If so, why and how can this trend be reversed?
- How can the State support and encourage community and voluntary organisations?
For you, what does it mean to be an ‘active citizen’? Doing some excersie
[suggested renaming – taskforce on inactive citizenship]
I had a conversation with a taxi driver and thought of Meskell v. CIE a famous constitutional law case which set out the unenumerated right of citizens to dissociate. (As opposed to associate – Join a union)
This taxi driver is a product of Dr. John Fingleton’s taxi de-regulation strategy and only works when he wants to. Non-union, and generally in hours that would be relatively off-peak for other drivers.
The reason for me posting this little diatribe is that the subject (taxi driver, non-union and working last Monday week) was accosted on the main street in Ranelagh by a driver who had exercised his right to associate and protest on a picket at the rank in the town.
The protesting driver however, proceeded to commit assault threats and various other public order offences which were reported to An Garda SÃochana by members of the public. The picketing driver apologised and escaped with a caution.
Is that active citizenship or inactive citizenship!?
“We seek the right to appeal” go to the High Court I say. If the Minister for Transport sets up and appeal function, happy days! It will generate some revenue for the legal profession.
Taboo topic while in a taxi -> Regulation.
I await the day they are all told to buy Mercedes, paint them a standard colour and take a ‘knowledge’ examination like the cabbies in London. These people have it easy.
*Scratches head!*
I was at a meeting on Tuesday for work purposes representing my employer on an external body, and one of the other people at it is going to the citizenship shindig today. She had drafted a submission on beahlf of the external body, and one of her remarks at the meeting is that the terms of reference for the consultation are so tightly framed that there is little meaningful scope for developing anything other than what the Task Force wants.
I used to be on the board of an area-based partnership company (my most recent “active citizenship) and one of the things I noticed is that the union representatives and some of the representatives from the voluntary sector had to do all their active citizenship in their own time, whereas the IBEC representatives and the representatives from all state agencies and some NGOs had board and committee meetings count as part of their work hours for their employment (and one cheeky brat from one of the state agencies included a special one-off dinner we had one Friday evening in a nice restaurant to mark [wind-down after | pat ourselves on the back for] a big piece of work the board had done said that time spent at the dinner was logged as part of his working hours for that week).