Dáil Éireann: First Day Was Disappointing

Day 2,045, 23:17 • Published in Ireland Ireland • by Arjay Phoenician III

You’re counted as a reader, you might as well vote!



For some reason, I thought there would be a little more to my first day as a Congressman in Ireland. It’s been a little while since we had a Dáil, I figured there would have been more fanfare. Truly, the day after the election, there is NOTHING about it in the papers and NOTHING in the national forum. I half-expected someone in a position of power to write to me and let me know about a place for debate, at the forum or elsewhere, but no such luck.

Truly, had I not gotten the kind of notice I get when I win other medals, I would have had no idea I was in. No friends congratulated me, because no notices were posted. Yes, one could look it up, but after being lectured about the mechanics of congressional elections, it seems more of an afterthought for everyone at this point. So long as the PTO siren wasn’t screaming in our ears, it’s no big deal, I guess.

When my grandfather was a congressman in Bolivia and South Korea, he followed the general tradition of donating the gold you won in the election to the national treasury or the national bank. It was a sign of solidarity, to show your fellow countrymen that your election was not about the gold. It was about service to your nation. The gold belongs to your country, not you. They would pool the Congressional gold, and it would pay for an MPP or hospital or something important.

That was my first impulse, to give the gold to the national bank. Unfortunately, I don’t see any sign of a national bank, and I don’t see any way to directly donate it to the treasury. So I went to the national forum—the dark, dank, creepy, underappreciated, forgotten, abandoned national forum—and posted on the Dáil Éireann thread, the first post there in over two months and the second ever. I asked if this tradition was still followed.



Then the guy who pulls Arjay’s strings went to work for the day, and, thirteen hours later, there was no response. Truly, as far as I could tell, the forum hadn’t been visited at all.

There IS only one forum, isn’t there? I mean, there’s the one put together this spring because no one was going to the old forum, but no one goes to the new forum, either. That IS the “official” national forum, right?

Which begs the question, where do Congressmen go to debate? What is the protocol for presenting legislation? I know other countries have a general set of rules, what’s ours? Or has it been so long since someone gave a damn that such things have died?

So I posed the question about the tradition of donating your Congressional gold on the board at eIrish University. Hopefully they’ll give me some help. It’s a little more active there, maybe you all should give it a try.



I did see one piece of legislation on the table. It was the inevitable vote to impeach CP Sweet Drinker. I promptly voted no, and at the time, most seemed to agree, the vote was 13-3 against the measure last I checked.

I thanked several people in private for the opportunity to get to the Dáil Éireann, and then, not knowing where I should go with it, I gave the CP my gold donation, trusting he will understand the spirit of it and put it to good use.

And then I sat down and wrote this.

I truly hope I see more enthusiasm for our legislature in the near future. Today was demoralizing. I’m not quitting, I think this is important, even if I am the only one who thinks so. I can’t be the only Congressman who is baffled, can I?

Or am I learning a lesson I should have already learned about life in eIreland?


Belfast Lough Times: Issue #26