Reformcard initiative - a means to monitor political promises?

An email recently landed in the Gombeen Nation inbox from a Johnny Ryan and Joe Curtain, bringing news of a new initiative to monitor the implementation - or otherwise - of the various political parties' political reform promises. 

It works, as far as I understand, by means of a "scorecard" which will rate the parties in areas such as government reform, electoral reform, transparency, public sector and local government reform.  So if Fine Gael, for instance, said they were going to abolish the Senate in their manifesto (as they have promised), they would be marked "4".  Their subsequent performance in said issue would be monitored thereafter, and this would replicate across a whole range of issues.  See scorecard.

The idea, I believe, is to make it easier for the electorate to track how parties perform in relation to the promises they bandy about so freely, pre-election.   A team of academics and politcal scientists have, according to the publicity material, agreed to give their time to track each party's score in each respective area. 

I am not sure about the methodology - or the political leanings of those doing the monitoring - but if it is carried out in a neutral, objective manner, it could well  help encourage political accountability in Ireland, which would be no bad thing.

 See Reformcard.com

Back to Gombeen Nation main page