Physical assaults are really poorly handled by the courts.
For violent crimes, they even allow alcohol or drugs as a mitigating factor, and rarely follow up on the character references. Amusingly, for nonviolent crimes they are much stricter.
Worse - self defense is next to impossible. You can't own pepper spray or anything like that, and if you fight back you can also end up in the dock for assault.
> You can blatantly violate GDPR and the Irish DPC will look the other way.
The DPC is (deliberately) chronically underfunded. Some suspect this is to keep the country a friendly location for certain multinational companies.
> You can plop a couple mobile homes on to your land and nobody will do anything.
That doesn't violate the letter of the (backwards) planning laws.
> You can break any and all environmental laws
Enforcement of those is left to councils, who often are the ones breaking said laws (specifically, destroying habitats).
As for turf cutting, those laws were poorly thought out and likely will play a big part in the next election in rural areas.
Banning commercial harvesting is undeniably a good thing, but the hard and fast attempt to ban cutting for personal use has not been well received, especially in the current climate with regards energy.
> The gardai are useless.
Yes, they seem to have their priorities backwards a lot of the time. They are excellent at pursuing cannabis users and road traffic offenses, but pretty rubbish at everything else.
The easy out politically is to call for more Gardai to be recruited, but numbers aren't the real problem - quality and distribution are.
> the officer told me "whatever you do don't vote for the Green Party"
The Greens here aren't well liked for many reasons around the country - largely when they come up with policies, they ignore the objective reality of life outside Dublin, and tend to go right towards taxing the bollix out of you or banning things without providing an alternative. See also: turf.
Take for example, public transport. Outside urban areas, it may as well not exist. However the Greens won't advocate for expanded public transit in rural (or even commuter areas outside Dublin) because there is "no demand" and "everyone there will just drive anyway".
They are also entirely opposed to nuclear power, which is unfortunate.
They are often referred to as "Fine Gael on bikes" for a reason.
> I'd be really interested in a politician who wanted to actually enforce the law.
This would require systemic change of the Gardai. FF, FG, and the Greens have no interest in this.
It would also require probably some changes to the courts...
But sure. Its grand like.
