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

The only reason to buy the Post yesterday was its tracking poll, it happily decided most readers will have no interest in the riots. Im sure the Editors were rewarded with the circulation figures for yesterday. Anyway the latest installment of the SBP tracker poll series, from now till election day, showed little news.
Two up [...]

McDowell gets feisty.
Ooh. Get you, miss thang . . .
RTÉ reports:

Choice of Taoiseach does not matter: McDowell
24 February 2006 16:30
The Minister for Justice, Michael McDowell, has claimed it will not matter that much whether Bertie Ahern or Enda Kenny is Taoiseach after the next election.
Mr McDowell, who is President of the Progressive Democrats, told [...]

Hallo Saint here. The old template was acting funny with some posts last night so I changed the theme. To see would it correct the error. Then I thought this one looks better. (But it show the posters names.) Would anyone else agree or should we go back to the old one.
Or does anyone else [...]

The Irish Times reported yesterday on a day in the life of Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, who seems to have spent a large portion of that day at opening ceremonies. While the article provides details of his schedule, here’s a quick breakdown.
At 1pm, Ahern officially opens a hardware store in Dublin 11. Subsequently he proceeded to [...]

Ah, did Seánie’s hissy fit pay off in the end?? The Irish Examiner’s breaking news service has the story:
22/02/2006 – 2:26:11 PM
De Valera to leave post in December

The Minister of State at the Department of Education Sile De Valera has indicated that she will step down from her post in December.
She’s [...]

Dublin radio station, NewsTalk 106 FM, is reporting this afternoon that significant errors exist on Ireland’s electoral register. They quote Minister Dick Roche as saying that, given this state of affairs, electoral fraud is a possibility.
The station’s website carries the following brief:
21/02/2006 16:20
The Government has admitted that any upcoming election is open to massive [...]

Monday, February 20, 2006A ‘rambling’ speech by Green Party leader Trevor Sargent at a pre-Christmas drinks function has led to the departure of the party’s communications manager Steve Rawson after seven years service, the Irish Independent reported yesterday.
Harry McGee reported in the Irish Examiner last month that ‘Sargent made a speech at his party’s drinks [...]

David McSavage watch out! Arts Minister John O’Donoghue wants your job.
The Kerry minister was incandescent with wit when he took to the podium at this weekend’s Ógra Fianna Fáil conference in Ennis, County Clare. Many delegates were seen clutching their sides as laughter became uncontrollable.An excerpt
I’m always very reluctant to talk about philosophy because it [...]

It’s said that there are two sides in politics — the inside and the outside. Not true! Two Irish political dynasties currently have members who are half in and half out, Síle de Valera and Seán Haughey.
Síle’s grandfather Eamon de Valera, and Seán’s father Charlie Haughey and grandfather Seán Lemass were all Fianna Fáil Taoiseach [...]

I feel really angry with my self. I used the Family Guy “Drive by argument joke” on a post. Now I have a post that can really use it. However forever not caring I am going to repeat the joke. But more about that later.
Back in November Sinn Fein suspended Francie Molloy for speak out [...]

This weekend will see Sinn Féin gather in the RDS for their árd-fheis. Sinn Féin have come a long way in the past 20 years or so. In 1986, they were just the small political wing of an organisation that some would have said was fighting for freedom, and others would have said was a [...]

In his 2004 political biography of Bertie Ahern, author and journalist John Downing described a meeting a few years ago of the Fianna Fáil parliamentary party. Downing reported that Taoiseach Bertie Ahern told his party’s Oireachtas members that he’d ‘fuck up’ any of them who ‘undermined’ him.
The Taoiseach is passionate about improving Ireland’s transport infrastructure [...]

I was watching the documentary “The power of nightmares”(you can watch it here) the other day. Basically what it tells is an interesting but very biased story about how the Neo conservatives in America and Al-Qaeda used fear to get people to vote for them. Very basically it is a Orwellian concept based on the [...]

Fianna Fáil candidate Chris Andrews made a spirited start to what will probably be a sixteen-month long election campaign in the Dublin South East constituency last night by getting himself out leafletting houses in the wind and rain on St Valentine’s Night.
Chris, who lost his Dublin City Council seat in June 2004, was selected as [...]

Note for inevitable future reference that Bertie’s ministerial reshuffle today makes absolutely no pretense at picking the best qualified people for the job. Not only is Mary Wallace’s promotion made with a view to her seat in Meath East, as noted in the previous post, but Pat The Cope Gallagher is extricated from a [...]

The surprise appointment of Mary Wallace to a junior ministry at the Department of Agriculture and Food will no doubt have tongues wagging in Leinster House and a few sore heads north of the Liffey. The East Meath TD and alleged refusnik Dail attendee following her demotement in 2002 was the jawdropper name in [...]