The rule, exactly. Before an election each citizen chooses: to vote — or to take a payment and not vote in that election. The payment is a percentage of the median income, set by referendum; there is no fixed sum. One ballot is one vote, with no multiplier in the count; the vote is amplified only in that each ballot's share grows as others step out. The budget pays under law; a candidate never pays. Only a referendum of all citizens — simple majority, no quorum — introduces, changes or repeals the rule.
The protocol has been introduced nowhere and no pilot has been run: shares, turnout and outcome figures in the chapters are estimates, and the protocol promises nobody an election victory. If a chapter says otherwise, Exact Answers and the Charter are correct. For a candidate: ten questions and ten steps. For a citizen, a mayor, a finance officer, a donor, a journalist, a scholar, a lawyer: answers by role. Everything in force in one file: llms-full.txt.
🇮🇪 Ireland: a Country of Referendums without an Initiative — "Forbidden, but Possible", the Sum by the Median, Two Underdogs and 213 Thousand Spoiled Ballots¶
Chapter: 09 — Other Countries File: 09_057g · v1 · 26 October 2026 Source: the architect's moves of 26 October 2026 ("Ireland — they have nothing to lose"; "if an independent referendum is held, and the Dáil sees the support, and an underdog is found — then forbidden, but possible") and the assignment: "find Ireland's nearest elections and two underdogs who need AB-EXIT to win, and compute the exact sum by the median." Numbers — CSO, Revenue, the Electoral Commission, the Oireachtas; polls — Red C and Ireland Thinks, October 2026. The referendum channel and the lesson of 1928 — 006b §3c; the comparison with Britain — 048l §2.
How to read. Ireland is a rare case: the people are used to deciding by referendum and living with the decision, the budget is in surplus, and there is no citizens' initiative, because it was abolished in 1928 the moment the opposition touched it. The chapter computes what the protocol would cost Ireland today, who needs it to win, and through which door it passes.
1. The sum by the charter: D = p × M¶
By art. 2 of the charter (048m) M is the median income for the last twelve months with published data, from the body that collects taxes. In Ireland that is Revenue's data (PMOD real-time payroll reporting), published by the CSO in the series "Earnings Analysis using Administrative Data Sources".
| Quantity | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| median annual earnings, 2025 | €46,305 (+3.3 %; mean €58,127) | CSO EAADS 2025, published 06.10.2026 |
| median annual earnings, 2024 | €44,816 (men €48,897, women €40,424; Dublin €49,224, Donegal €36,967) | CSO EAADS 2024 |
| median equivalised disposable income per person, 2024 | €31,767 | CSO SILC 2025, household survey |
| p | D at M = €46,305 |
|---|---|
| 1 % | €463 |
| 1.5 % (the 033c invariant) | €695 |
| 2 % | €926 |
| 8–10 % (the architect's Russian benchmark, 001e) | €3,704–4,631 |
Budget check. Electorate 3,612,957 (the register at the 2025 presidential election). At D = €695 and half taking — €1.26 bn per Dáil cycle (up to five years), about €250 m a year: 0.2 % of 2026 expenditure (€118.5 bn) and 2.7 % of the projected 2026 surplus (€9.2 bn). At D = €4,000: €7.2 bn per cycle, €1.45 bn a year — 1.2 % of expenditure and 16 % of the surplus. Ireland can pay even at the upper bound out of the surplus without touching expenditure. The Fiscal Council's caveat: the surplus rests on corporation tax, without which there would be a deficit — so "where is my share" in Ireland is asked precisely about the rent that may disappear (057d §3b).
1b. The public figure: €2,000 — what it is for a resident and what it costs¶
The architect's move (26.10.2026). "Better to overstate the sum — and let the authorities suffer and justify its repeal before the citizens at a new referendum, so they do not relax. And the figure will be prettier for the people." And then: "let's make €2,000 the public figure for discussion." The logic is already built into the charter: p can be lowered only by referendum and no more than once a cycle (art. 3), the rule repealed only by referendum (art. 14). Whoever wants to lower it must stand up and tell half the country "I am against your two thousand" by name — the kamikaze of 059l §8b. The asymmetry favours the citizens: overstating is cheap, lowering is dear. The 033c invariant (1.5 %) remains the formula for comparing countries; for the Irish conversation the public figure is €2,000, that is p ≈ 4.3 % of the median €46,305.
What €2,000 is for an Irish resident (rates from January 2026):
| Benchmark | Value | €2,000 is |
|---|---|---|
| median weekly earnings | €759 | 2.6 weeks, more than half a month |
| minimum wage, €14.15/h × 39 h | €552/week | 3.6 weeks |
| state pension, maximum | about €299/week (≈ €15,500/year) | 6.7 weeks of pension, 13 % of a pensioner's annual income |
| jobseeker's allowance | €254/week (≈ €13,200/year) | 7.9 weeks, 15 % of annual income |
| rent of a two-bedroom flat | €2,204/month | almost a month's rent |
| median household disposable income | €61,666/year | 3.2 % |
One sum pulls differently: for the median earner it is 4.3 % of a year, for a pensioner or a benefit recipient three times weightier. This is the mechanics of 057d §3b: the payment acts most strongly on those who are brought in today by habit and by the package.
Forecast by group (shares of those who stay — from 016 §25.5 and 048l §4, shifted for the larger sum; Ireland's adult age structure — approximate):
| Group | Share of adults | Take at €2,000 | Stay |
|---|---|---|---|
| 18–34 | ≈ 27 % | ≈ 40 % | ≈ 60 % |
| 35–64 | ≈ 52 % | ≈ 55 % | ≈ 45 % |
| 65+ | ≈ 21 % | ≈ 85 % | ≈ 15 % |
| total, 3.61 m | ≈ 57 %, 2.1 m | ≈ 43 %, 1.5 m |
A hall of about 1.5 million — almost the size of the turnout at the 2025 presidential election (1.66 million), but of another composition: by habit almost nobody is in it, by stake everybody. Cost: €4.2 bn per Dáil cycle (up to five years), about €840 m a year — 0.7 % of 2026 expenditure and 9 % of the projected surplus. With the early bonus of 5–10 % (art. 6 part 3) the first three days pay €2,100–2,200; with the late discount of 20–30 % (art. 6 part 5), €1,400–1,600.
Four scenarios side by side:
| Scenario | p | D | It is… | Take | Hall | Per year | % of 2026 surplus |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| the 033c invariant | 1.5 % | €695 | 4.5 days of median pay | ≈ 47 % | 1.9 m | €240 m | 2.6 % |
| two weeks | 3 % | €1,389 | 2 weeks of pay | ≈ 55 % | 1.6 m | €550 m | 6 % |
| the public figure | 4.3 % | €2,000 | half a month's pay, almost a month's rent | ≈ 57 % | 1.5 m | €840 m | 9 % |
| the Russian benchmark (a month) | 8.6 % | €4,000 | a month's pay | ≈ 65 % | 1.25 m | €1.9 bn | 21 % |
Why €2,000 and not €695 or €4,000. €695 is below the threshold of attention: 4.5 days of pay change no decision, and the art. 3.3 benchmark (desirable for 40–50 %) is reached only just. €4,000 is a fifth of a surplus the Fiscal Council calls dependent on corporation tax, and a hall a quarter smaller than today's turnout — the opponent gets the line "they bought half the country". €2,000 is almost a month's rent and more than half a month's pay, a round figure, a hall equal to today's turnout, a price of 9 % of the surplus without touching expenditure. And every cycle the government answers why the median from which the sum is computed is not growing (040v §6).
The honest price of overstating. If the surplus disappears with the corporation tax, the payment becomes the first line fought over; for that case — decision 13 (048k §3: the budget accumulates for the next cycle). And the answer to "they bought half the country" is 1g "This is vote buying": a rule pays, everyone equally, for leaving, not for a vote.
2. Is the M data fit for the charter¶
Checked against the CSO methodology (Background Notes). The data are administrative, exact to the euro and fresh — the best base of all the countries in the 033c table, where the others say "about". But the definition of the median must be fixed before a pilot.
| Charter requirement | At the CSO | Assessment |
|---|---|---|
| the body that collects taxes, on the same base (art. 2 part 2) | Revenue PMOD data, published by the CSO | the base matches; the publisher is the statistical body, not the tax body — to be written in |
| the last 12 months with published data | 2025 published 06.10.2026, a lag of about ten months | fits; D is announced 30 days before polling (art. 2 part 6) |
| open methodology | Background Notes published | fits |
| a recalculation rule for a change of methodology (art. 2 part 4) | the source changed in 2019 (P35 → PMOD) | the very case part 4 was written for |
What to refine — three decisions, all from the same Revenue data:
- Unit of count. The CSO computes the median per employment, not per person: "half of the employments earn more". A person with two jobs is counted twice. The charter needs a median per person (per PPSN).
- Part-year. Employments active fewer than 50 weeks are excluded; seasonal workers, students and those who started mid-year are not in the figure. A per-person median including part-year is lower.
- Earnings or all income. The self-employed (Revenue has Schedule D), pensioners and benefit recipients are excluded. This is the fork of decision 14 (048k §3), and Ireland shows its price: median earnings €46,305 against median disposable income per person €31,767 — D €695 against €476.
Minor exclusions (sectors A, T, U; earnings under €500; "extremely high" with no stated threshold) barely move the median, but the "extremely high" threshold must be a number in the charter. The effect of decisions 1–2 on D is tens of euros; of decision 3, about €200.
3. The nearest elections¶
None scheduled. Two Dáil by-elections were held on 22 May 2026 (§4). The general election — no later than 17 December 2029; local and European — June 2029. The government — Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael with independents. A private referendum by route B (035) needs no election date; the underdog needs one, and has up to three years.
Polls of October 2026 (Red C 21.10; Ireland Thinks 02.10): Sinn Féin 19–22 %, Fine Gael 15–18 %, Fianna Fáil 15–18 %, Social Democrats 9–11 %, Aontú 8 %, Independent Ireland 5–8 %, Labour 4 %.
4. Two underdogs who need the protocol to win¶
Social Democrats (Holly Cairns), 9–11 %, fourth. The voter is young and urban, the issue is housing amid a surplus — "where is my share" word for word. Today they cannot win: the young stay home because they know the old cannot be outvoted (40bi §4). The 016 §25.5 forecast is exactly their case: the share of the hall under 35 from 21 % to 38 %, over 65 from 30 % to 12 %. The Dublin Central by-election of 22.05.2026 showed the ceiling: Daniel Ennis topped the first count and won on a turnout of 43 %. Under the protocol the other 57 % either take the money and are counted, or come with a stake.
Independent Ireland (Michael Collins), 5–8 %, rural. Galway West, 22.05.2026: their Noel Thomas led on the first count and lost on the eleventh to transfers from Labour to Fine Gael — 16,519 to 19,218; the sixth time in fifty years that a governing party won a by-election. The machine against the newcomer, as in Kelowna (1f §6b), only here the machine won. Turnout 44 %: the habitual and the party voters came, and those angry at Dublin stayed home. Under the protocol the habitual take the money (040ba §1), the angry one with a stake stays and weighs double (40bi §5).
A third, in one line — Aontú (Peadar Tóibín), 7–8 %: a party that grew from 3.9 % on the vote "against".
5. 213,738 spoiled ballots: the burned without an addressee¶
The presidential election of 24 October 2025: Catherine Connolly, an independent of the left backed by Sinn Féin, the Social Democrats and Labour — 63.4 % on the first count on a turnout of 45.8 %. And a record: 213,738 invalid ballots, 12.9 % of those cast, ten times more than in 2018. The choice was between two and a half candidates (the third withdrew but stayed on the ballot), and one voter in eight who came spoiled the ballot deliberately. This is the cry of the burned, not the yawn of the apathetic (019 §60.2): the person paid with his time to say "not you". The protocol gives this vote an addressee (059n): whoever wants nobody takes the money and is counted in the share of takers; whoever wants a third stays and weighs double, and a third candidate of the centre is for the first time not a wasted vote. Connolly meanwhile is proof that a non-party candidate wins in Ireland when there is no machine against her.
6. The door: Article 27¶
There is no citizens' initiative (006b §3c: abolished in 1928). But Article 27 of the constitution lets a majority of the Seanad and a third of the Dáil — 58 deputies — demand a referendum on a bill without the government. Sinn Féin, the Social Democrats, Labour, Aontú and independents are more than a third. The architect's move: a private referendum gives a number the Dáil does not have; a clear majority on a clear question obliges it to reckon (Quebec 1998, 048n); the underdog goes to the election with the number, and no kamikaze stands against him (059l §8b). A constitutional amendment is art. 14 of the charter ready-made: an ordinary Dáil law cannot repeal it later.
The first link is done. On 26.10.2026 the architect published on MyUplift the petition "€2,000 or your vote: put the question to the people" to the members of the Dáil and the Seanad; what it gives and does not give — 048n ("step zero without an organisation"). Moderation and signatures are a daily measurement.
Weak point¶
The polls are two firms in one month; an underdog with the number from a private referendum is a forecast — nobody has had such a number yet. The three decisions on the median (§2) are for economists before a pilot; the effect on D is estimated, not computed. "Nothing to lose" (the architect's move) is about the national experience of leaving and the surplus, not about poverty: Ireland is rich, and that is exactly why the vote there is already dear today (057d §3b in reverse). 🟡
Related: 006b §3c · 048l §2 · 048k §3, decision 14 · 048m arts. 2, 14 · 033c · 035 · 059e · 059n · 016 §25.5 · 1f §6b · 40bi · 057d §3b · 023e