Joseph O’Connor
Novelist and professor of creative writing
Every Irish teenager should be given a €300 culture voucher by the Government. This would be redeemable in bookshops, cinemas, theatres, concert halls, galleries. They do versions of this in Italy, France and Germany as a means of developing interest in the arts and acknowledging that an education dealing only with the mind is like trying to learn to swim in a bathtub. Possible, but you’re missing out. Apart from the obvious benefits, creativity will soon be the quality most desired by employers. This would be a remarkably inexpensive way of growing it.
Justine McCarthy
Journalist
A super referendum day would strengthen the tenets of this republic and address growing social inequality.
The Convention on the Constitution recommended in 2014 that justiciable economic, social and cultural rights be enshrined in Bunreacht na hÉireann. This would oblige governments to implement policies with the resources available to provide housing, health services, appropriate accommodation for children in care, domestic violence refuges and education access for people with special needs, among other rights.
While we’re in the polling station, we might scrap the religious references in the Constitution’s preamble and the president’s oath. We could also vote to gender-balance the Constitution’s female-blind language. It is farcical to still refer to the president as “he” when three of the four presidents in the past 35 years have been women.
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David Puttnam
Film producer
One Government act that would improve all our lives is to simplify and improve the compulsory purchase legislation.
We’re suffering from a chronic housing shortage, yet almost every town and village is scarred by derelict, unoccupied properties. Not only does this create the impression of a country in decline, but one that’s lost confidence. I’m conscious of the historical factors associated with any form of “compulsion” in respect of property rights, but this is a blight that must be addressed.
Malachy Clerkin
Sports writer
The National Development Plan makes a big play of developing “world-class sporting facilities” such as the new velodrome, the new cricket stadium, etc – all very welcome, necessary projects that make up for decades of neglect. But it is vital that the Government ploughs funding into local, municipal sports facilities, even in places where there may not be an immediate need.
The CSO reckons we’ll have seven million people in Ireland in the 2050s – where are they going to play their sport? Wouldn’t it be better to build the swimming pools and astro pitches and running tracks and boxing gyms and all the rest of it now?
Imagine if the Government properly leaned into prioritising sports facilities in small towns around the country. It could help to (somewhat) stem the tide of rural depopulation and be a positive contributor to the general health of the nation. Crucially, some future government is going to have to spend the money anyway.
Fintan O’Toole
Journalist
By far the worst large-scale abuse of human rights in Ireland is forcing children to grow up in poverty. There is no excuse for it – either that we can’t afford to prevent it or that we don’t know how bad the lifelong consequences are going to be. It is also insanely expensive – the financial costs over time in healthcare, criminal justice and taxes and productivity lost are many multiples of what it costs to fix it.
By introducing a second rate of child benefit, targeted at those families most in need, the Government could immediately lift 55,000 children out of poverty. The cost is roughly €775 million – about what the Government spent in the last Budget to reduce VAT for the likes of Burger King and McDonald’s. But struggling kids are not a powerful lobby group so this proposal (to which virtually everyone agrees in principle) has been on the official agenda for 14 years now. It makes you wonder what people in power entered public life for in the first place. If they can’t be bothered to do this, maybe they’re in the wrong line of work.
Maria Steen
Barrister
In 2024, we rejected a proposal to erase the work of mothers in the home from our Constitution. This year, the Government can reverse the disastrous year 2000 policy of tax individualisation, the effect of which has been to make it impossible for most families to survive on one income, and to rob women of the choice to stay at home to raise their children. The two-income mortgage model has led to spiralling property prices – and the resulting housing shortage, smaller family sizes – and demographic crisis. It has meant poorer quality of life for children, with families spending less and less time together.
Laura Leeson
Disability advocate
I have been a wheelchair user since birth; I was born with cerebral palsy. My biggest bugbear is the misuse of the blue badge for parking. When I was a child it was much harder to get one of these stickers, and they couldn’t be taken from car to car. But the more recent blue badge permit allows people to move it between vehicles, something that is wide open to abuse.
I have driven around shopping centres and public places looking for a wheelchair space only to see an able-bodied person hop out of their car in a wheelchair space with a permit in the window and clearly no person with a disability on board. To me, a permit with a wheelchair ought to be for someone in a wheelchair. My call to the Government this year is to regulate this issue, taking the right to sign off on permit applications away from GPs.
Desmond O’Neill
Consultant geriatrician
Nursing home residents suffered the greatest privations and worst death rate of any Irish group during the Covid pandemic. Separation of a largely privatised sector from the public health system and the lack of a clearly defined clinical oversight system were key factors in this dismal outcome. Neither has been adequately addressed. This Government has opportunity to address this neglect by a) implementing the Sláintecare commitment to increase the proportion of public nursing homes relative to private ones and b) actioning the recommendations of the Covid-19 Nursing Homes Expert Panel for a robust clinical governance structure.
Aisling Rogerson
Food entrepreneur
Farmers are the custodians of our land, providing us with one of the three essential substances for human existence. They are key to a secure future for our eco- and food systems, and they have more answers than we give them credit for. Acknowledge and reward them for making the right decisions. Schemes like ACRES are brilliant, but we are still too focused on beef and dairy. Greater grant support and opportunities for vegetable farmers please. We’re still importing over 80 per cent of our daily veg.
Abdallah Aljazzar
Student
I landed in Ireland from Gaza and ended up in hospital suffering from low blood pressure, fainting. Gazan hospitals are in ruins, but I discovered Ireland’s hospitals make you wait and wait. I ended up discharging myself, never imagining a modern health system would be so bad. My home in Gaza was a tent. Now, it is student apartments – like every student, or so I thought. No, I am the lucky one. I have a place to live here. Housing, my friends here complain, is too scarce and expensive. Health and housing don’t exist in Gaza, and I had come here expecting paradise, but the complaints I hear sound so much like home. Better health and affordable housing, please.
Olivia O’Leary
Journalist
One answer to the housing crisis can be found on Ireland’s streets, which are lifeless at night because no one lives upstairs any more. When I was a child, everyone lived over the shop – butchers, solicitors, drapers, grocers, bankers. Some economists say it’s cheaper to build on a greenfield site. But is it really when in towns there would already be a connection to services; when people would be less dependent on carbon-emitting cars? It can’t all be done in a year, but surely we could make a start.
Niall Muldoon
Ombudsman for Children
Imagine an Ireland where every decision made at policy level that impacts children had to have their best interests factored in before that decision is finalised. Think of no child living in emergency accommodation or having to wait more than four months for an assessment of need. If the Government wants to show it is truly committed to children’s rights, it can immediately signal that it is going to fully, directly and as soon as possible incorporate the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) into Irish law. The State ratified the UNCRC in 1992, but it is time to show that Ireland is a true leader in Europe on children’s rights.
Donal O’Shea
HSE lead on obesity
Regulate to reduce social media’s impact on young people. There has been a surge in youth mental health problems in the last 15 years, surely contributed to by the trends to which social media platforms have been exposing young people’s developing minds. The surveillance-based business models of platforms such as TikTok cause systemic harm. Regulating social media companies may be more difficult than a ban like the one Australia introduced, but regulation would drive actual change and have further reach.
Adam Schmitz
Student
The price that students pay to live near their college is outrageously high, with rooms reaching more than €11,000 for the academic year in UCD. A recent report found that the true annual cost of a year in college for a student renting accommodation in Dublin is over €14,000. One easy way for the Government to reduce the cost would be to provide free public transport for students, removing the burden of daily Leap card fees and expensive trips home at the weekend.
Beyond that, it could cap on-campus rents, reduce the student contribution fee back down to €2,000 – or abolish it completely.
Patrick Honohan
Former governor of the Central Bank
Ireland should not be seen as foot-dragging or freeriding on so many European policies that are overall in our national interest. Consider our failure to take the measures needed for decarbonisation; our performative voting against the Mercosur trade deal; our learned helplessness on maritime defence; our unwillingness to countenance a single securities market regulator. During its presidency of the EU this year, the Government should, instead of appeasing special interests, grasp the nettle by taking the immediate actions in taxation, regulation and expenditure that will reconfirm our commitment to a Europe under pressure.
Maeve O’Rourke
Lecturer in human rights
The Government should publish legislation to give people statutory rights to home and community-based care and personal supports. Institutionalisation at the hands of market forces must become a thing of the past. We need to build a new social care ecosystem where workers are well trained, paid appropriately and have good working conditions, and where the cared for are included in their community and maintain their independence.
Barra Roantree
Economist
Congestion plagues our cities. By one estimate, drivers in Dublin lost an average of 95 hours sitting in traffic last year, the second most of any European city. This has massive economic and social costs. The Government forecasts these will rise to almost €1 billion per year in Dublin by 2030. While better public transport can help, major projects such as MetroLink and BusConnects are not due to be delivered until the 2030s. Charging drivers crossing the canal cordon around Dublin city would immediately cut congestion, pollution and speed up buses. The alternative is continuing mass misery.
[ Congestion charges will not be introduced in Dublin, despite worsening trafficOpens in new window ]
Maureen Kennelly
Theatre company chief executive
There has never been a more exciting time to be an artist in Ireland, but the cost of living makes it challenging to survive as one. Increases in State funding for the arts over recent years are welcome but, regrettably, not at a sufficient level to enable artists to have reasonably paid careers and sustain secure lives. The Government should continue to expand its financial investment in the professional arts sector.
Louise Lawless
Sports journalist
Government funding to sporting bodies should have a player-voice element. Similar to the 40 per cent gender balance target on boards, a percentage could hinge on whether players have had a say and their representation in their organisation’s decision making. Many an issue for women in skorts – sorry, sports – could have been avoided if their contributions had been sought earlier or at all. Tying representation to funding would mitigate players having to protest to feel heard.
Gerard Howlin
Public affairs consultant
Policymaking, delivering services and building cohesion within and between public organisations isn’t remote work. Remote working can be part of the mix, but it shouldn’t be the mainstay in the civil and public service. Yet guidelines to be in two days a week are routinely flouted. Six years on from Covid, we are enabling a State without a centre or the future leaders who can bring it together. A minimum and enforced norm must be three days per week in the office.
Muireann Lynch
Energy economist
Ireland made huge progress in installing renewable generation and batteries in recent decades, but the same cannot be said of gas generators. The last significant gas turbine investment on the island was at Whitegate in Cork in 2010, and electricity demand has increased by about 20 per cent since. New gas generation is crucial for reducing electricity price and boosting security, but we can’t seem to get them over the line. The Government can accelerate the planning, regulatory and market reforms necessary to deliver much-needed gas generation, targeting 2000MW of new supply by the end of its term.
Ronan Glynn
Public health doctor
Ireland has lagged behind other countries in using digital tools to support healthcare. The Digital for Care Strategy offers a clear plan and direction for digital health. Real progress is under way, with the patient app, shared care record, virtual wards and the early use of AI. To keep that momentum, the system needs sustained investment from Government, including a public electronic health record, and a commitment to joined-up systems – public and private; acute and community – that work together.
