Maman Poulet

This email arrived in my inbox at 9.12pm – if you signed up to hear more about Fianna Fáil on their new website you were included. I think we’re talking 17,000 plus addresses but I’m open to correction on that.

What do you think of it? More Obamaification?

Dear friend,

I’ve just come off stage at Fianna Fáil’s Ard Fheis, where I’ve outlined the difficult measures we’re having to take to help return the country to growth. I was frank about the scale of the problems we face, but I’m optimistic about the ability of the Irish people to meet these challenges through the hard work and ingenuity we’ve always shown. We’re a resilient and creative nation and we’ll meet our challenges together.

You’ve heard from me, now I want to hear from you.

I’m asking each of you to submit a question for me, which I’ll answer as many as I can via video right here on the new Fianna Fáil website. Submit your questions at:

http://www.fiannafail.com/askthetaoiseach

To better serve you, and to help lead us out of this recession, I want to hear what you thought of my speech, the questions you might have about some of the important measures I’ve announced and your ideas about how Fianna Fáil can set Ireland back on the road to growth and renewed prosperity.

Ask me questions – as directly as you want to – and I’ll answer them in the clearest terms possible. I want to embrace a new openness and engage with you in honest conversation about the direction of the country. Post a question for me:

http://www.fiannafail.ie/askthetaoiseach

Our Ard Fheis is finishing up now and I’d like to thank the many thousands of Fianna Fail members who came and made their voices heard.

Wishing you and your family security in these difficult times,

Brian Cowen

Taoiseach

P.S. if you were unable to attend the Ard Fheis or missed the coverage on television and radio, we covered the event on our website and we’ll be adding more speeches and video over the coming days.

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Bloggers in the house today at the Fianna Fáil Ard Fheis include

Mark Coughlan who keeps running off and coming back with great nuggets to blog about!

Gavin Sheridan has been busy with the video camera.

Eoin Bannon from Yellow Roman Candles is comparing speeches of Gerry Adams and Dermot Ahern and finding similarities.

They’re all far more interesting and dedicated to their art than I am – more from me after the event and now on the live blog where I’m doing culinary reports from #ffaf.

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Yesterday I asked on twitter for some musical suggestions to accompany Brian Cowen tonight at #ffaf.

Brian Greene has responded – anyone else?

Video below with Elton for added effect

Other suggestions are of course welcome!!!

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Yes they let me in. I made it past the canvassing outside – internal party elections require many canvassers, pieces of paper, stickers and badges.  Must have been spotted a mile off because nobody accosted me.  I’m wearing a press badge and have a Fianna Fail neck thing to hang it off. Merchandising tent will be visited later.  Live blogging over here.

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There’s an article in today’s Irish Times about politicians and the internet .- With 3 months to go to election day there are a few comments from MEP’s and European Parliament candidates who talk about their websites, intentions to blog and answering emails but caution there’s nothing like personal contact.  

I’ve got some more twittering politicians subscribed to this week and I’ll do a post on them myself shortly -sadly there was no mention of the twitterers (Eoin Ryan MEP amongst them) in the article.

Also missing is the podcasting senator. What you mean you didn’t know we had one?  Senator Joe O’Toole will be imparting his wisdom today on The Use of Technology in Elections at a seminar for independent politicians in Athlone organised by MEP Marian Harkin. 

Simon Harris (Greystones Town Council Candidate) makes an appearance talking up the 517 friends he has on Bebo. I’m still trying to figure out if he’s calling his potential voters/friends on Bebo and facebook apathetic… No mention of the Youtube though?

SIMON HARRIS, a Fine Gael local election candidate in Wicklow, tries to capture the traditionally “apathetic younger voters� in the area by the heavy use of Bebo and Facebook. These are the voters who may be bypassed at the doors or would not go to a local constituency office to ask questions, he says.

“It’s where people my age get their information, and every time I issue a press release I can communicate freely and directly with my target audience with one click,� says Harris, who has 517 supporters on his Bebo page.

“The use of Bebo and Facebook is not dumbing down of politics, just making it user friendly,� he argues.

The article concludes with a mini-review of all the political parties and their efforts and plans for the future.

Meanwhile Harry McGee is planning a major piece of work on the area of politics and d’internet. So if you’ve any recomendations you can let him know here.

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Update: Bertie Ahern is home just in time for the speech it seems – expected to arrive in City West 45 minutes before Cowen took to the podium.

I had today in my diary as one of the days Bertie Ahern, our Iar Thaoiseach, was due to be away on a Bertie Earner.  I previously posted on this event at Molloy College in New York which had to be cancelled following his accident resulting in a broken leg. This weeks Irish Echo reports that all systems are go for the event which begins today at 9.45 am New York time.

Ahern is the main speaker at the Long Island university’s Joseph F. Maher Leadership Forum, an event that will serve as the curtain raiser for the new Irish Studies Institute at Molloy, which has its campus in Rockville Centre. …His speech will be entitled “Peace Through Inclusive Dialogue: Ireland’s Journey.”

Miriam Lord in  last Saturday’s Irish Times  covered other Bertie earners including a recent trip to  Central America – Honduras specifically – where Senor Bertie delivered a keynote lecture to the Honduran National Business Council. ‘It was entitled ‘ The Celtic Tiger: The Irish Model of Development.’ Miriam of course notes the farce that is talking about the Tiger when its a mangey cat! No sign of that speech on the website of the Office of Bertie Ahern

Unless Bertie is flying home tonight and travelling straight out to City West to the 72nd Ard Fheis in the morning it looks like he’ll miss the ‘lavish’ praise to be heaped upon him. I’ll keep my eye out just in case!

Related articles by Zemanta

• New for 2009 – The Bertie Earner (mamanpoulet.com)

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“This will be a very serious ardfheis.�

Mary Coughlan, Tanaiste, Launch of Clar for 72nd Fianna Fáil Ard Fheis, 25/2/09

The Fianna Fáil Ard Fheis begins this evening and with this mornings opinion polls combined with/resulting from the recession and of course the little difficulties about the launch of the website during the week it is going to be worth keeping an eye to events in CityWest.

It’s Brian Cowen’s first Ard Fheis and the first major party conference to be held during the deep throes of the recession.  Traditionally a  time to get candidates for local council and European Parliament elections a bit of camera time, I’ll be keeping an eye to who’s out and about and looking about or chosen for Saturday Morning Telly stardom!

Murmurs (aka spin) began earlier in the week on the content of Cowen’s speech (another state of the nation possibility!) and there are several policy launches/initiatives planned for announcement.

A number of Irish bloggers have been accredited to attend the Ard Fheis this weekend including yours truly.  I’ll be in attendance for some of the sessions on Saturday and will be micro blogging on Twitter, liveblogging with some other Irish bloggers and writing up thoughts here.  (Given my current lack of stamina I intend to watch Cowen’s speech tomorrow night at home in the company of live bloggers.)

If you are one of the 4,000 Fianna Fáil members attending the Ard Fheis and want to talk about blogging or even the state of the party/country etc. feel free to leave a message and we could meet up? Minister/TD/ Prospective County Councillor?  feel free to also get in touch and say hello!  You can also try to find me at the Ard Fheis – I’ll be the one with the netbook typing away and inhaling the scents of Soldiers of Destiny en masse.

If you want to join in the live blogging fun from home you can find us here – Registration is simple through Facebook or Twitter or MSN profile and one of the creators of the session will then sort out comments etc. to be published on the blog.

If you are at the Ard Fheis or watching at home or listening to radio coverage and want to tweet rather than live blog your thoughts you might use the tag #ffaf so they are easier to find. Your tweets can be picked up and entered into the Liveblog coverage.

I’m not sure at the moment what Fianna Fáil’s own intentions are regarding online coverage or if there will be any tweeting, youtubes or live blogging coming from party staff but if I find anything I’ll point you in it’s direction.

Finally of course if you have questions for me to try to ask or comments on anything you see/hear feel please feel free to comment!

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Seriously it did take place – trendsetting last night on Tonight with Vincent Browne – I was not dreaming.  Former Minister for Finance and Leader of Fine Gael, Alan Dukes.

Watch the whole thing  – Alan Dukes on Tonight with Vincent Browne

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Yesterday I heard about a seminar being organised by Strawberry Media where Joe Rospars, New Media Director for the Obama campaign was to speak. It was pitched at bloggers and political and techie types and I was among the first to sign up and the organiser asked me to blog about the event and spread the word.

Now a little bit of background – In recent weeks it’s been apparent that Fianna Fáil were ramping up social media activities, there was a twitter account and then a sign up for online engagement with bloggers and encouragement for party members to blog.  I signed up to be kept informed as I’m on mailing lists for other political parties and I’ve helped run events for all parties and none to attend to discuss social media and blogging.  And I cover elections online.

Finally the largest party in the state were getting serious about online engagement and this was to be welcomed as far as I was concerned – I’m into people doing things online whatever the colour of their poltical bib.  I then heard that Blue State Digital (whom Rospars founded) were working with Fianna Fáil on the new strategy and things started to click into place.  Strawberry Media are working with Fianna Fáil and BSD as the Irish partners in the project.

But this seminar tonight was not advertised by Strawberry Media to bloggers as being part of the Fianna Fáil online engagement strategy. We were going to hear from the Obama online media guru – many of us had already supped from the Democratic Move On cup when Zack Exley came to talk at the EU Commission Representation in Ireland event in October. So we were looking for more detail and information and in just over 24 hours the event filled up.

Anyway off to the seminar I go,  a good sprinkling of bloggers – most of whom were not political bloggers but more social media types, there were lots of FF members and press and media handlers there also. There were also members of other political parties there – who thought they were going to a seminar presented by Joe Rospars.

We get welcomed by a Fianna Fáil staff member who introduced the party General Secretary Sean Dorgan. Sean proceeds to welcome us to the launch of the party website and says that they were glad to have bloggers there and some Ogra FF members to hear more about Blue State Digital from Joe Rospars.  There was an explanation of the involvement of Strawberry Media in the project and words about FF online in the future. The was a lot of activitiy happening on twitter during the event with people wondering what event they were at – but nobody in the room from the party or the company seemed to be reading  Twitter – Problem one!

The FF website is up on the screen and lots of FF types are around room making sure everything is ok. Camera Crew and photographers are there too. No politicians from the national stage that I could see.

Joe starts his input with a video about the Obama campaign and a brief exploration of the logistics involved online and offline in organising the movment and the campaign. The input ends with the Fianna Fáil website and this website stays up during a question and answer session. If I were a non alligned political blogger/social media type at this stage I would be very confused – Problem Two.

Questions are posed by FF candidates, members, journalists and bloggers and range from questions on Obama related issues, Blue State Digital directions (more about this in another post from me later) and questions about Fianna Fáil’s online strategy.

There has been a very negative reaction tonight to the way the event was run from mainly non political aligned bloggers and social media enthusiasts.

If Fianna Fail wanted to launch their online engagement strategy to an audience of bloggers and social media activists then they should have done the full bells and whistles launch and invited us all – we would have been there with bells on no matter if we voted or not. In fact from many in the room I think they would have offered up lots of advice and many questions and commentary. Last week Bord Gais Energy did something similar with an audience of bloggers – it worked really well because it was up front in that a company wanted to talk to a group of bloggers about a new project.

Did Fianna Fail mislead us tonight on what we were going to? I don’t think Strawberry Media did – they wanted people to hear Rospars – Fianna Fáil just misjudged how to do things with the very varied audience in the room.

The media company involved asked us did we want to hear Joe Rospars speak and lots of us said ‘yes please’ and they knew how to handle things and I think it was a pity they were not allowed to run the event as it was advertised.  As for Joe I won’t remember much about his speech because I was reading the reactions on twitter and watching the reaction in the room – a number of questions asked were not answered and little new information was gained.  The fact the new website was on the screen in the room led to FF specific questions being asked  – Cue Problem 3.

If it were a Fianna Fáil web strategy launch we’d probably have learnt so much more and FF would have lots of blog posts on the new project and engagement.

Finally to add to confusion regarding the night I wonder who I gave my name and email address to when I signed in at the door? Because at the end of night Joe was telling us all to email Fianna Fáil as if we were at a FF event.

Now if people are wondering about all the noise and negativity tonight it’s simply because people became very confused at what event they were actually at.

Update:

• Gavin has text of event invite as sent to FF members – hence the confusion!
• Brendan on  how not to use social media in politics
• Green Ink tells the story pictorially
• Damien Blake the organiser from Strawberry Media (and Fianna Fáil Councillor  and blogger) takes it on chin and demonstrates how to respond!

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The Government published proposed legislation last month which discriminates against lesbian and gay couples and heterosexual non marital couples also. In the month since it’s publication I have seen one article in the Irish Times and one reaction from any of the lesbian and gay organisations. I’ve no idea why groups have been so silent – any guesses?

The Adoption Bill 2009 is being handled by Minister for Children and Youth Affairs, Barry Andrews. (Press Release here) The legislation has been long awaited and is especially needed to fully enforce the Hague Convention.

In the interests of clarity, the current adoption legislation is being incorporated into a single piece of legislation, by bringing forward existing provisions into the Adoption Bill 2009 and restating or updating those provisions as appropriate. ‘The result of this is to create a single standard for both prospective adoptive parents and children, regardless of the circumstances or the location of the adoption’ continued Minister Andrews.

The bill outlines the circumstances which will be permitted for making an adoption order or recognising an inter country adoption. Same sex couples are specifically excluded by the mandating of marriage or single parent adoption in specific circumstances as being pre-requisites. Note also the requirement for ‘good moral character’ but no explanation on what that might be!

Section 33 (4)

(4) The Authority shall not make an adoption order, or recognise an intercountry adoption effected outside the State, unless—
(a) the applicant and, if the applicants are a married couple,
each of them has attained the age of 21 years, or
(b) the applicants are a married couple and one of them is the
mother or father or a relative of the child and either of them has attained the age of 21 years.

Section 34

The Authority shall not make an adoption order, or recognise an intercountry adoption effected outside the State, unless the Authority is satisfied that the applicant or, if the applicants are a married
couple living together, each of them—

(a) is a suitable person to have parental rights and duties in respect of the child, and
(b) without prejudice to the generality of paragraph (a), is of good moral character, in good health and of an age so that he or she has a reasonable expectation of being capable throughout the child’s childhood of—
(i) fulfilling his or her parental duties in respect of the child,
(ii) promoting and supporting the child’s development
and well-being,
(iii) safeguarding and supporting the child’s welfare,
(iv) providing the necessary health, social, educational and other interventions for the child, and
(v) valuing and supporting the child’s needs in relation to his or her—
(I) identity, and
(II) ethnic, religious and cultural background,
(c) has adequate financial means to support the child, and
(d) has been provided with appropriate information, advice and counselling concerning adoption.

The full text of the Adoption Bill is available here.

To try to discover the reasons for excluding same sex couples I contacted the Office of the Minister for Children and I’ve spoken with Minister Barry Andrew’s press officer. I was then asked to email in my questions. Despite several contacts I’ve received no reply.

Meanwhile ICTU has called for amendments to the bill including calling for same sex couples to be eligible for adoption and point to a European Court of Human Rights Ruling.

Same Sex couples should be eligible for consideration for adoption: Secondly, we draw your attention to the decision of the European Court of Human Rights that the welfare of children is not served by excluding individuals from being considered as adoptive parents because of their sexual orientation. The case, EB v France, centred on the decision of the French Courts to exclude EB, a French woman, from adopting a child as an individual because she is a lesbian. While Ireland does not exclude individual lesbian and gay people from consideration as adoptive parents, The issue in Ireland is that same-sex couples are excluded from consideration as joint adoptive parents. This impacts especially on the growing number of couples, lesbians in particular, who are parenting children and have no mechanism to establish a joint legal connection with their child, nor does the child have a mechanism to establish a legal claim on both parents. Recognising the primary principle that the welfare of the child is paramount at all times, and that no person has a ‘right’ to adopt, same-sex couples should be eligible for consideration for adoption, subject to the rigorous assessment process for married couples and single adopters already in place. Such an approach is in line with other EU Countries such as Denmark, Belgium, Germany, Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, England and Wales.

The Bill is now going through the Oireachtas having received a second stage reading in the Seanad last week. There were contributions calling for amendment to the bill on the matter of adoption by same sex couples from Senators David Norris and Ivana Bacik.

And finally to find out the reasoning for the exclusion of same sex couples from the Bill we have the response of the Minister to dwell upon.

The right of same-sex couples to adopt is a sensitive issue. Adoption is a right that is afforded to children, and the right of a child to a family is at the core of adoption legislation. There is also a right in my view which must be considered, that of same-sex couples. Their rights need to be explored. The Civil Partnership Bill is the forum at present for the extension of those rights. I am an extremely strong supporter of those rights but this Bill is not the appropriate forum for that. I believe their rights will be visited on another occasion but at present we are in a legislative process with the Civil Partnership Bill. This will afford greater rights to same-sex couples, and rightly so.

The Adoption Bill is clear. It states that if more than one person is to adopt, they must be married to each other. Unmarried, heterosexual couples and homosexual couples are treated in the same way in that they are not allowed to adopt in this country. Single people may adopt in circumstances where they satisfy the Adoption Board about eligibility and suitability. I accept this is a sensitive area and core issue. It is a demonstration of the type of society we wish to live in, and I believe it is something we will continue to debate in the future.

So because same sex couples can’t marry they are not being discriminated against as unmarried heterosexual couples can’t adopt either! Such brilliance in manipulation of the law Minister.  And he mentions the Civil Partnership Bill yet to be published but the heads of bill published last year do not contain anything on the matter of children’s rights and the rights of non-biological parents at all. Maybe the Minister knows something we don’t but he won’t be telling me about it seemingly!

I doubt many lesbians and gay men are even aware that this legislation is going through the Oireachtas at the moment or if they would be aware what to do if they were aware. But if organisations who claim to represent lesbians and gay men are lobbying on the issue it would be good to know what points they are making to protect and strengthen same sex families. Or maybe some other arrangements are being made in the forthcoming Civil Partnership Bill and we should not feel that the Government are discriminating against us?

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