[ILUG] Council votes for software patents

[Feargal Reilly]

On Wed, 19 May 2004 17:24:50 +0100
Christian van den Bosch <cjb at linux.ie> wrote:

> Colm MacCarthaigh wrote:
> 
> >>Is there any easy way of finding out, online if possible, who
> >all the>candidates are for each post (each local/national
> >constituency as well>as European elections), and how to
> >contact them?
> 
> ...yet for some reason oireachtas.ie lists current TDs,
> senators etc, but in very few cases does it give any contact
> details. Googling for individual names seems to yield the best
> results so far...

Some (most) local authorities have contact details for
councillors online.
http://www.dublincity.ie/profile/councila-zfrm.html lists those
for Dublin, other local authority sites are at 
http://www.gov.ie/organisations/list.asp?type=7&D=Local+Authority

As someone else pointed out, difference groups fall under
difference areas and hence different websites, so there is no
official centralised list of representatives.

Of the unofficial ones, http://www.electionsireland.org/ is
kept mostly up to date, and just presents information so there
isn't a PD bias.

http://www.politics.ie/ doesn't have as much information,
although it's a good place to find party press releases.

Should I just send you my bookmarks file?

> > While you're at it, other people worth lobbying;
> <snip>
> > (That's the Oireachtas Committee on Enterprise and Small
> > business)
> <snip>
> > (That's the Oireachtas Committee on European Affairs)
> 
> Useful to know. How does one find stuff like this out?

Trial and error!

The gov.ie website has a list of state organisations; 
the oireachtas.ie website has a list of committees; 
the Oireachtas section on the gov.ie website has feck all.

The hardest thing to dig up is minutes of local authority
meetings. They sometimes turn up in the publications section of
local authority websites.

http://www.dublincity.ie/profile/publ2.html has some, although
lots of them are in word format. I've complained about this
in the past, I must do so again quoting the new open-standards
policy.

You're buggered if you want to find voting records - if anyone
has a better experience, please tell.

Pulling this thread back on topic, one of the issues I'll be
hitting canvassers with is the lack of availability of
information on local authority work, and to push the take-up of
OSS at a local level.

-- 
Feargal Reilly.
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Visit http://ie.bsd.net - BSDs presence in Ireland
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