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

Just had a look through the party news section and saw this “Councillors must defend integrity of dual mandate - Lacey” heading from labours press site. (We get a RSS feed from the site with some jiggery pokery). Yet when you go to the link. It is an empty page and all the other links [...]

As El Matador has written, the PD’s have fallen to a new low in the polls with just 2% of first preferences. Now to me that is a rather significant number because, and I may be wrong here, I always assumed that the margin of error in most polls was at least 2%. If thats [...]

The latest Sunday Business Post/Red C opinion poll shows Fianna Fáil support rock solid at 35%. Taoiseach Bertie Ahern has previously called this poll standing ‘acceptable enough’, and he seems confident that it provides a firm foundation for the party’s 2007 election campaign.
I was polled by Red C last week and, as well as confiding [...]

The latest Sunday Business Post/RED C poll shows that the gap between Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael remains steady. FF support increased by one percentage point from 34 to 35%, while Fine Gael has increased its recent gains by registering a 27% share of the first preference vote, one percentage point higher than June 2006.
However, [...]

[posted as a .doc previously but now reprinted in full here]

What would happen if the US dollar fell, as is expected, by 30% or more?
What will happen when it does fall?
Assuming it does happen, what preparations are being made by the Irish Government to minimise the economic outfall from such an event?
What if the fall [...]

New Sunday Business Post poll out.
Fianna Fáil 35% up 1
Fine Gael 27% up 1
Labour 12% unchanged
Sinn Féin 10% up 1
Greens 7% unchanged
PD’s 2% down 1
independants 7% down 2

Fine Gaels attacks on peoples rights continue. Not content with putting drunks in hospitals into drunk tanks. They are continuing their hatred for the whole innocent until proven guilt thing. Firstly they wanted to tag people out on bail. Now they want limit free legal aid.

Hadnt spotted this before, but perusing a copy of the discarded Socialist Worker from todays anti-war demo I came across this story;

Keith from Talideon.com has taken Simons original template and done a lot of work to it. I just wanna thank both keith and simon for the amount of work that has gone into the site layout over the months, I appreciate it and im sure that our readers do to.

A while back I looked at the Green parties 50 steps for education from step 1-4. It was supposed to be a step a week but nothing has been announced in almost 3 weeks. Have they abandoned the 50 steps? Have they drawn a blank on ideas? Or are they taking a summer break.? Love [...]

From the Indo, former Mayor Terry O Brien is due to be selected tonight as Labour’s candidate for Kerry North. They are trying to win back Dick Spring’s seat which was lost to Sinn Fein’s Martin Ferris last time out.

As if confirmation was needed, Jim McDaid has confirmed the sense of betrayal felt by Donegal North East Fianna Fail over the return of the Blaney camp to the mothership.

As we prepare for the next general election it’s time to put alcohol advertisement and sponsorship back on the agenda. It seems clear that there is no deeply-rooted societal reason for deciding not to ban alcohol advertising: if it could be done so successfully with tobacco companies then why not also with alcohol? The answer is clear: vintners. Smoking is an infinitely easier societal evil to target through regulation because less people smoke than drink and most people realise that smoking has a detrimental effect on individual health, the health of those around them and the health service itself; but we’re all a bit more blasé when it comes to alcohol.

Is modern Ireland getting you down. Do you need some me time to relax from the hassles of bad urban planning. Would you like healthy treatment with a bed in an actual room? Thought so! Well you are in luck.
If you want to enter into a competition to win a luxury spa weekend in the [...]

About an hour and a half before i head off to do the interview with pat rabbitte, so get your questions in the comments before then