Spending Data and Ireland

Ireland is an original signatory to IATI but has yet to produce an implementation schedule. This is currently being drafted, alongside a review of their White Paper on Development Policy. Ireland has not joined OGP. Ireland performed poorly, particularly at the activity level. At this level, even less information is available than in 2011. ….

Self-delusion is a characteristic of Irish society. In the old days we were told things about ourselves that in retrospect seem laughable. We were morally superior to other races, O’Connell Street was the widest street in Europe, the Shannon was going to be drained, the country reunited and the Irish language restored.

Such was the pathetic nature of the society that it tended to grasp at any idea, no matter how absurd, seen as positive to our warped sense of nationhood.

One possible benefit of the present financial, economic and social crisis may be that the Irish may begin to awake from the dreamlike state of delusion into which they had long ago fallen. To emerge from this nightmare will require leadership. Straight talking such as has never been heard before in this country needs to be the hallmark of a future leadership. This will be a painful process but could provide healing.

ActiveCitizen, an Irish non-profit, was founded to encourage the Irish government to liberate meaningful data in useful non-proprietary machine-readable formats, to facilitate development of civil data-driven applications and to encourage citizen participation in civic and political life, so to improve governance for all.

Unlike the UK or US, Ireland has a weak philanthropic ecosystem and has no indigenous monetary support for Open Data, meaning there is little opportunity for organising public awareness initiatives.  

So, instead, another aspect of Active Citizen’s campaign is to reach out beyond Ireland to international NGOs and other governments.

“Report of the Forum on Philanthropy and Fundraising” (May 2012) has been supported by Bono’s ‘ONE foundation’, better known as ‘ONE Campaign’, which is a champion of open data and aid transparency but in the UK:

Good for open data

You can thank the IMF for the residential property price register unveiled yesterday, you can thank the IMF for the – albeit limited – reform to our draconian, distorting, uncompetitive, uncapitalist, unsocialist bankruptcy regime, you can thank the IMF for an independent fiscal council which is still finding its way, you can thank the IMF for putting reforms to competitiveness in our legal and medical sectors on the table though there is obviously still much to do in these areas, you can thank the IMF for the central credit register which will promote responsible borrowing and lending. Some of these reforms need be fully realised – as the IMF recently noted, Ireland has the second highest expenditure on public health relative to GDP in the world, yet we have poor health outcomes, we have one of the highest expenditures in the world on public education yet our education results are mediocre, 20% of our medication is cheap non-generic compared with 80% in the UK. With respect to Kilkenny’s triumph yesterday, maybe it is the IMF members who should be carried aloft on shoulders to their next meeting at the Department of Finance, because the IMF is delivering real reform.