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

So from tomorrow if you have an illegally held firearm you can hand it into your local Garda station and not get arrested. This is as part of the governments effort to reduce crime. But in fairness it is a waste of time.
In Ottawa Canada they ran quiet a successful one where 506 firearms [...]

I’ve been meaning to do something like this for a while, but was concerned about the overhead involved. Then this morning in the space on hour I heard 3 stories from government party members all calling on the government to do something! So this is for them - Why can’t the government do something?
You can [...]

Considering this weeks cartoon are Fianna Fail biting the hand that feeds them? From the Irish Examiner. Property speculators should be taxed out of existence to keep prices down, warns Ahern

It seems the post Government considered legalising heroin disappered for a while. Back now. Sorry about that. Check it out and join the debate. It is one we need to have in this country.

Sinn Fein’s Aengus Ó Snodaigh today accused the Government of planning to play the “race card” in the upcoming election.
Sinn Féin’s justice spokesperson Aengus Ó Snodaigh has accused the Government of being “ruthlessly committed to exploiting, and creating, fears over immigration to Ireland for electoral benefit”.
Hmm, excuse me lads but in fairness isn’t that basically [...]

Seems the Green party have come to their senses. From the Irish Examiner
Up to this year, the Greens had advocated raising corporation tax from the existing 12.5% rate to 15%.
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The Greens changed the policy at their annual convention this year and now propose no increase in corporation tax.

Originally posted to the Cedar Lounge Revolution by WorldbyStorm.
An article in yesterday’s Irish Times (sadly subscription only) by Deagláde Bréadún points up some of the current fault lines on the left and further left over the outcome of the Israeli/Hizbullah conflict and the response of the Irish government to the request to send troops to [...]

Reading this weekend’s Sunday Business Post, there was one article which focused on a major problem for political parties in Ireland - the lack of new members.

From Irish Times
The Government looked at legalising heroin in 2001, a former junior minister has claimed.
Eoin Ryan MEP told The Irish Times that he and Government officials visited Holland and Switzerland between 2001 and 2002 where heroin is dispensed to addicts for self-injection in designated clinics.
Mr Ryan was minister of state with responsibility for the [...]

Damien Mulley and Rob Synnott have just announced a very exciting project. They have created aggregator feeds for all the TDs. These feeds pick up blog posts which refer to politicians so as to create an archive of discussion material. Politicsinireland.com is very beta at the moment but pop over and give it a boost.
Hopefully [...]

There was an interesting if flawed piece in the Sunday Indo today about collage education and the disparity between various areas. Now the flaws in the article are so glaring and of a numerical nature I have to say I doubt the stats in the piece. But they probably are in the ball park. But [...]

After reading a friendly piece in today’s Indo by John Cooney in advance of the new RTE series to mark the former Taoiseach’s birthday, I turned to Garret’s weekly column in the Saturday Irish Times. It is a most astute piece of commentary. Garret wants to reiterate the point that if Bertie Ahern [...]

From the Sunday Times
IRISH people are more likely to be victims of crime than any other country in the EU — according to a new European commission study.
Now that is an indictment of the government. We really have the worst crime rate in the EU. Oh wait
the report, which is based on citizens’ experience and [...]

Originally posted on AdamMaguire.com
As silly season nears an end and we head towards the start of the real election campaign and a new Dáil term the cynic in me says we should prepare for more political policies and decisions that will defy logic but appeal to what seems like the majority, even if they are [...]

Looking through the local papers for the local paper section I was struck by the amount of references to the cost of going back to school. Education is to me the most important thing for a country to work on and should be the most important priority for any party. So when I see parties [...]

Carlow People
Counting the cost of ‘free education’
Anglo-Celt
High percentage of men can’t read or write in border counties
Galway Advertiser
Hate mail won’t stop gay pride events says organisers
Laois Nationalist
Laois still one of the poorest counties
Limerick Post
Grim reality - Limerick is the smallest city
Western People
Workers are earning less in the West
Meath Chronicle
‘Give higher allowances’ for school costs: [...]