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

The Dail may yet see more questions on Bertie Ahern’s financial affairs following bad tempered proceedings this morning.
The economy showed strength in the second quarter with a 5% expansion on GDP. GNP (excluding multinational earnings) was up 9%, partially explained by a low number in last year’s result. Consumer spending and construction are continuing to [...]

It seems that MySpace will now be encouraging people to register to vote and Walmart are going to be doing something like this too by running an initiative to register all their staff to vote. They have 1.3 million employees. Simon McGarr wrote a guide on how to register to vote which deserves attention.
In one [...]

Yesterday’s Dail debate. Sorry for the delay and skip the ads.
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Mary Raftery, writing in today’s Irish Times (subscription required), has come up with a string of quotes appropriate to An Taoiseach’s current position. Unfortunately for Mr Ahern, he was the one who originally made all of them.

Ah John, John, John. Isn’t it great when people misuse words and phrase to make a political point, like trying to make someone seem wrong by associating them with some group like the Nazis by suggesting that massaging crime figures is akin to inciting people to murder millions of Jews. Or, in John Gormley’s case, [...]

From their website:
Since the publication of information volunteered in confidence by the Taoiseach to the Mahon Tribunal, I and my colleagues have refrained from any substantive public comment. This was to afford the Taoiseach an opportunity to assemble the relevant information, ascertain his legal obligations in relation to the Tribunal, and to account publicly for [...]

Just so that the Blogwaves don’t get jammed with Bertiegate to the exclusion of all other matters that have relevance for the voters, might I ask if anyone has a breakdown of the various “Stealth Taxes” that are constantly, and correctly, debated, usually without any finite conclusion that would encourage a voting pattern?

According to Today FM, Mary O’Rourke said in the Seanad that the leak did not come from the Opposition but “closer to home”. This is getting stranger and stranger.

During today’s Leader’s Questions in Dáil Éireann, Pat Rabbitte touched upon the claim that An Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, claimed that he had no bank accounts between 1987 and 1994. During this time he was Minister for Finance, among other things.

Edit: It is starting now. Go to Oireachtas.ie to watch it.
The Dail returns today—an issue which itself was sidelined was the thirteen-week holiday that has just passed for our legislators—at 2:30. The Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, fresh from last night’s interview and in the face of increasing digging around the “12 Apostles” and a very [...]

Last week’s headline-grabbing poll was in the Sunday Business Post and by now it’s only worth keeping chips in. However, Mayo was also subject to a number of polls at the weekend and is proving to be “unpredictable” at best. Two polls—Millard/Brown for the Mail and TNS/MRBI for TG4—suggest that the constituency is all to [...]

Ok, here is a quick list of the guys on the list and what Google reveals about them. I think most of these people are right as they seem to have connections to Bertie, but that could be just a coincidence, so some people may not be the people. If anyone knows if I am [...]

Why should we blog the vote exactly?
My name is JL Pagano and I am an American who has lived in Ireland for 28 years. I am honoured to have been invited to contribute to this website.
According to the official government stats from the 2002 ballot, 60% of registered voters around the country actually went [...]

One of the twelve men, dubbed the Twelve Apostles, involved in “helping Bertie Ahern out” with the court costs surrounding his separation from his wife in 1993 is a Limerickman.
Owner of numerous Dublin pubs and a shareholder in Sunderland Football Club, Charlie Chawke, from Adare, County Limerick, was named as one of 12 people who [...]

There is one question that the media seem not to be asking around Bertiegate, one question that questions the ethics of someone in ways more than Bertie receiving loans, and that question is, who leaked the details of the tribunal? The tribunal was supposed to be in secret, and whether that is right or wrong, [...]