Irish Election - Coverage of Irish Politics, News and Current Affairs

The return of Morgan Kelly to the pages of the Irish Times is most definitely noteworthy, Kelly spent much of the period from 2006-2008 being pilloried as a wonk in an ivory tower who went wrong on the maths somewhere. In 2007 he wrote in a head to head with Austin Hughes (behind paywall, email us for full article):

In Ireland between 2000 and 2006, house prices doubled relative to income and rents. Based on what happened after other European booms we can expect prices here to halve in real terms over the next few years.

Continue reading ‘The Return of Morgan Kelly and more Bad News’ »

When I put the headline on this post, I thought, cheekily, that I could have gotten away with just saying Journalism in Ireland: Waste of Time. It would still be a launch pad for a viable post: over the last number of years, journalism in Ireland hasn’t been a pretty place. The big broadsheets have all had a major slimming down, with budgets cut and hundreds of journos turfed out. That was happening before the recession – it was part of the ongoing ‘challenging’ environment facing print media. But now with the recession it can only be accelerated. And of course it has spread to TV and Radio. Newstalk and Today FM have had layoffs and merged their news team (same owner, Denis O’Brien), and of course we all know that RTE is running a deficit of 68m and has begun a major belt tightening operation, so there aren’t going to be major opportunities there for a while. Plenty of gloom there alright, but I wanted to talk about Irish language journalism.

Continue reading ‘Journalism in Irish: Waste of Time’ »

Exchequer figures were released by the dept of finance in the last few hours.

Don’t worry, I’ve no wince-inducing chart this time.

Main points, Exchequer deficit now stands at €14,709,153,000 (€14.7bn), this time last year it was €5.6bn.

So, more than doubled between Jan 08 and Jan 09, ouchies.

It should be noted however that €3bn of that increase did go into Anglo while another €3bn went into the National Pensions Reserve Fund – so it’s one of those ones that’s ugly from a distance but better than expected close up. At least that’s what I tell myself in those types of situations… ehem, socially, personally and economically.

Tax revenue is down more than €3bn year-on-year.

For more official/informative stuff, The Irish Times have covered it in some depth online already.

Continue reading ‘Exchequer Figures – deficit more than doubles’ »

More figures out today and another graph that made me wince…

EDIT: In a comment Ben has drawn my attention to apparently incorrect reporting from RTÉ, The Irish Times and myself - according to Karl Whelan of Irish Economy the economy did not shrink by 8.5% as reported by, well, a lotta places [links coming], including us at Irish Election. See his post here.

Continue reading ‘Update: Economy shrinks… in 3 months’ »

It’s been announced that “An Bord Snip Nua” will report tomorrow on its proposed reductions in public expenditure and increases in public revenue. The report will go to the Minister for Finance. There is no indication of when a public version of the report will be made available.

Suzy is putting together some favourite moments from Questions and Answers ahead of tonight’s final show and looking for some awards categories too.

I’m also thinking up awards categories that you might not hear of on tonights show. Care to add a few?

Most frequent audience member award?
There must be UCD Alumni (Kevin Barry Cuman members in particular) all over the world who got plenty of free beer on regular Monday nights to keep them going through college – some probably have showreels on the basis.

Most tokenistic female panelist ever?
Q&A was legendary for it’s one female panellist among all the lads.

My own might be “the best question never to make it to the panel”. I would like to nominate Michael O Brien’s contribution as the early frontrunner, Q&A is noted for Bowman’s filtering of comments and questions – no pre-approved material makes it to the panel.

An Bord Snip reports tomorrow, with cuts to social welfare and services likely to top its list of recommendations (if our Sunday’s are to be believed). In the meantime though, Brian Cowen has announced an Innovation taskforce whose aim will be something about getting Ireland toward the Smart Economy. The members will be people who are charged with advising “the Government on options to increase innovation and entrepreneurship and to ensure that investment in science, technology and research translates into high-value jobs and sustainable economic growth.”

This is excellent, laudable stuff. This is the way of the future, surely. So why is it that this quango is being added on top of the bodies in Enterprise Ireland, the IDA, the HEA, Science foundation Ireland, the entire Dept. of Enterprise Trade and Employment and the multiplicity of business networks already out there?
Continue reading ‘Brian Cowen’s Innovation Taskforce, Innovative Policy’ »

Michael Lowry released the statement below in the last hour, he’s airing some grievences about how he feels the Moriarty Tribunal is operating. Nobody seems to have done anything with it yet – maybe for reasons I am not aware of – the statement itself is fairly defensive.

Continue reading ‘Lowry Accuses Tribunal Counsel of Discriminating Behaviour’ »

That graph made me wince…

The Quarterly National Household Survey (figures on unemployment) figures for the first quarter of 2009 were released today. You can read the document in PDF format here.

Continue reading ‘Not Good Bed-time Reading – Labour Force Figures’ »

2007 is a critical year in the chronology laid out by the IMF report.   The Celtic Tiger Mark I had been dead since 2001 but even in 2007 there was still time to pull the game out of the fire on the property bubble Mark II version.  So where was fiscal policy?  Here is the 2007 budget minister’s speech, as delivered in December 2006.  Housing is hardly mentioned, but taxes were still being cut.   Yet in the accompanying analytical document, there is an awareness of the warning signs highlighted by the Fund – the loss of competitiveness and the role of housing in driving overall growth.  But this produced no policy reaction.  The 2008 budget is even stranger.  Now housing is recognized as a problem, but only in the context of a philosophy that it was already self-correcting and a stamp duty tweak — which seems like such a big deal at the time — would help.  Whatever became of the minister who delivered those 2 budgets?

If you’ve just sat down after a slap-up dinner and thought “hmm, I wonder what the International Monetary Fund have said about Ireland in their latest Staff Report” and considered jumping across to IMF.org, don’t bother. I’ll sum it up here for you.

Note: This was a staff report – the IMF has a staff and a board of directors, they always note that a staff report does not necessarily reflect the views of the directors (though it usually does). You can read the directors’ conclusions here, it’s short and in readable language. You can also watch a rather unprofessionally made and inadvertently funny video of the Mission Chief for Ireland’s take on the staff report here.

Continue reading ‘IMF report – Unemployment to hit 15%’ »

From last night’s debate on a private members motion (FG) on Crumlin cutbacks.

During the debate in the Dail, Ms Harney said: “I find it strange that when we ask hospitals to make efficiency savings, some hospitals decide that the most sensitive area is the area that should be cut first.”

Those nasty hospitals….taking spin to a whole new level. Depsite the outrage, this is the new briefing line – implying the hospital didn’t try to find efficiencies in the first place.

Last night the government put forward plans to invest in jobs to the trade unions as part of the social partnership plans. The fund will initially consist of a €250 million investment with a possible pot of €1bn in theory.
Continue reading ‘David Begg won’t be the one to turn down €250 million Jobs Fund’ »

Much of page 12 in today’s Irish Times is given to follow-up articles on yesterday’s conference on political reform. Like most conferences, it had its good parts and…

I spent the day in a bunker-like lecture hall deep in the bowels TCD’s Arts Block listening to highly-informed journalists and academics. The vast majority of the speakers were either insightful, educational or entertaining – some were all three. I thought Michael Marsh (TCD, ‘Do our elections do what we want them to?’) and Michael Gallagher (also TCD, ‘The role of the TD’) stood out amongst the academics. Continue reading ‘Round-up and Review of the Conf on Political Reform’ »

According the Irish Times the date for Lisbon II will be set for Friday October 2nd. It’s not a weekend and it would be preferable to have this vote at a time that suits many people. Nonetheless this is the date we have.
Continue reading ‘Cabinet to Decide on October 2nd as polling day for Lisbon II’ »

Apropos only 19 of 145 judges taking a pay cut, Niall Collins TD for Fianna Fail in Limerick wants a referendum:

“This group of elite untouchables should be subjected to the regular procedures administering the pay of higher civil servants. In the modern day being protected by the Constitution is simply not good enough given that many thousands of people and their families are suffering falling incomes and job losses.”

Continue reading ‘Niall Collins Calls for a Referendum on Judges’ Pay’ »