The Republic of Ireland now has some 34,000 NGO entities operating in the country, for a population of 5.7 millions or so. Roughly one NGO for every 170 citizens which costs about 6.8 Billion euros in State grants. That’s an average of 200K euros per NGO and an average spend of 1200 euro for every man woman and child in the country. This also means that the more media and academia embedded powerful NGOS also get to dictate Government policy mainly through their annual budget submission rationales, citizen assemblies on thorny subjects and in NGO promoting national public service media and indeed independent news media (analog and online). In fact often the government sets up NGOs to speak and support Government agendas which are highly synched so that Government officials may argue that they are being advised and have listened to experts and the people. So to a large extent we have moved away from democratic processes and are fully immersed within soft technocratic processes. Am looking forward to the release of a new book https://x.com/EoinLenihan/status/1976269244326162916 . Disclaimer I have no interest in this book other than its material.
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