I want specifics ... not a whimsically toned quick reply .
The different parties there , their political leanings ect?
OK sorry didn't have a lot of time this morning. Erm well Irish politics has been dominated by one of two Republican/Nationalist right of centre parties both of which are branches of the Old Sinn Fein which fought the war of independence during the 1920's. After the Free State treaty was negotiated by Michael Collins on behalf of an essentially free country half his party repudiated the deal with Britain because it fell short of full independence and there was a brief but bloody civil war which the Free Staters won, minus Michael Collins who was ambushed down in Cork and killed.
The Free Staters became the Cumann na nGaedhael party, which later absorbed a nascent Irish fascist Brown-Shirt movement. The Free Staters dominated the early Daíl ("parliament"). In 1933 they became Fine Gael which is the name they still go by.
The late thirties saw the rise of the defeated party from the civil war which became Fíanna Fáil under the another icon of Irish republicanism Éamon de Valera. It was under Fíanna Fáil that the republic was finally declared in the 1940's.
Both of these parties as I say have been more or less right wing, at times extremely and other less so, and both are Nationalists and Republican. Both are Populist also. The major differences between them are subtle and voters for them tend to be tribal based on where you live in the country, and/or which of them your relatives supported during the Civil War. There's a class element to this tribalism too, with Fine Gael being traditionally a more middle class party especially in the countryside where farmers with larger holdings and often Protestant Republicans supported them. Fíanna Fáil have a more working class poor support base.
In addition to these two behemoths is the Irish Labour party (also stridently republican as are all Irish political parties really) which is actually older than both the big Nationalist parties. At one time it was fairly large and enjoyed a more nationwide support but over time Fíanna Fáil has robbed a lot of its working class vote especially outside Dublin, Dublin being where most of the Labour party's support is these days.
Labour used to be a socialist party in the same style as its British counterpart, but these days it's more of a Social Democrat party with a largely middle to upper middle class urban support base.
There have been a variety of smaller parties in the last 80 years or so. The thing to remember is that we have Single Transferable Vote proportional representation here which means that constituencies have multiple seats meaning that in most cases each constituency tends to have a mix of parties represented in the Dáil.
The Irish constitution after the manner of the American constitution is a single document which structures how this country functions. All changes to the constitution must be put to a vote in a referendum and the highest constitutional court in the country is the Supreme Court. The Dáil is bicameral, being split in to the Dáil and the Senate or an Seanad Éireann, the latter is supposed to be the upper house while the Dáil is the primary legislature where the Executive is etc.
There is of course also a President who is head of state, but apart from signing laws and some glad handing the President has very little power.
Essentially the system here means that TD's (Teachta Dala or MP's to you) of all parties are extremely held to their support at a local level, in very few other countries is the axiom that all politics is local more true than it is here. This can mean that coherent characteristics or policy differences between parties are very difficult to discern and you have to know your local TD's and how what they think and how they vote in the Dáil fairly well to know if you want to vote for them.
Voting in elections can be highly tactical and since parties field multiple candidates within constituencies in order to maximise the number of seats they get there's plenty of sometimes virulent competition even between candidates of the same party. It also means that TDs elected in marginal seats can have disproportionate power within the government and sometimes will be given Ministries which they then use to feather their nests within their own constituency.
It also means that whips have only fairly limited control over backbenchers from seats with strong majorities which leads to the whip being withdrawn from them, there are often a handful of "Independent Fíanna Fáil" TDs and often a quite a few independent TD's in general.
The voting system means that this country almost always has a coalition government. Most frequently Fíanna Fáil +, sometimes these coalitions can be highly heterogeneous and sometimes very unified, it depends on how the votes are cast and who can negotiate a viable government. The one thing which is always a given is that Fíanna Fáil and Fine Gael will never be in government together because of the tribalism which makes them despise one another. Which ever of these two gets in to government you're guaranteed that a right of centre party will be the largest party in the coalition, with the largest number of Ministers and whose leader will be Taoiseach (Prime Minister). The dynamics of coalition government make politics here very febrile and tense at times and at other times extremely stable as has been the case for the last 15 years or so.
Whatever the drawbacks of coalition the electorate here now exactly what they're doing when they hit the voting booths and they vote coalitions in to government on the basis that it's always good to have one of the two big parties be held to account by one or more of the smaller parties and independent TD's.
When I first moved here they'd only a few years earlier had a referendum to change the constitution to legalise Divorce (1996), and not long before that decriminalised Homosexuality (1993), and abortion still isn't legal here except in extreme circumstances where the life of the mother is at risk from continuing the pregnancy. An estimated 10,000 Irish women travel every year to Britain to obtain abortions, despite there having been a number of incredibly controversial referenda to change the constitution to make abortion legal.
Oddly enough though when Homosexuality was decriminalised the age of consent for Homosexual sex was made equal to that for Heterosexual sex, nearly a decade before that happened in Britain.
The sudden flurry of social changes which happened during the 1990's were the result of wider economic and social trends which came to be described as the Celtic Tiger.
Ireland joined the EU in 1973 ending decades of relative isolation and it has always been a relatively enthusiastic member. Strictly speaking the Celtic Tiger could never have happened were it not for Billions in EU funds having been pumped in to this country in the preceding decades, which upgraded the infrastructure.
The mid twentieth century was pretty bleak here, dominated by the Roman Catholic church and and crippled by poverty and mass emigration. There are some cultural hangovers from that time, most notably abortion laws, but actually the benevolent influence of the EU here (yes I said it) combined with rapid economic growth (now suddenly somewhat shrunken) have transformed Ireland permanently, making it an open and open-minded country which while it has it's problems is rightly proud of its successes and the structures of a state which took several hundred years of intermittent bloody conflict with Britain to create.
There have been corruption scandals, some pretty astounding ones actually, most arrising from the 80's and early 90's, and of course there have been child sex abuse scandals too involving the RC church.
A lot of this country is dominated by localism and it is often true that it's not what you know but who you know, but I'm yet to meet a country where that isn't the case.
Hope this has been helpful. :wink:
