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Roll Call
Irish MEP's have one of the lowest attendance rates in the EU
They’ve also been making fewer speeches and asking fewer questions.
8.13pm, 5 May 2015
16.4k
37
THE ATTENDANCE RATE of Irish Members of the European Parliament at plenary sessions was one of the lowest in the EU in the second half of 2014, according to research by European Movement Ireland.
A report published by the organisation today found the attendance rate dropped from 91% in the first half of last year to just 76% in the second half.
The average attendance rate at councils was also below average.
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The number of speeches given by our representatives in the parliament also fell last year to just 560, compared to 903 in 2013. As one of the graphs below shows, Irish MEP asked fewer written questions this year and just 109 in the second half of last year.
Flanagan explained last year that his wife had been ill and his children needed him home. At the time, Crowley had also been in hospital for several months.
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Baz we’re talking about China, stories like this are not the American dream of rags to riches, in communist China they are the result of the ubiquitous corruption.
An article in the Sunday Times in 2011 caused uproar on sites like Mumsnet. The basic jist of the article was that the women who had succeeded did it by sheer determination and didn’t go around whining about glass ceilings, gender quotas and childcare. Their children by and large were cared for by their grandparents and one mother only saw her children only every 2 weeks. Most of them worked 10 hours a day 6-7 days a week. One of them was quoted as wondering why western women wanted everything. They wanted a well paid high end job and children at the same time with someone else to pay or subsidise the childcare. The women went on to say that in her view you either had a job or a family but you couldn’t have both.
Needless to saw it made for very interesting reading on social media over the next few days.
That’s not my point Joanna and BTW a lot of men would love to spend more time with their children but can’t due to work pressures. Shift work, overnights and long hours on the road mean that they can’t spend more than a few hours a week with their children so it’s not all rosy for men either.
I love the ridicule of china at the end. You should look at where china sits on the ranking of income inequality when compared to other countries. Ireland is 46th, China is 67th and the US is 96th (according to the world banks figures).
Interesting that….. problem is China is not communist. At some stage there could be revolution western style. The richer they get the more freedoms they will want.
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