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

Rumours that the latest National Development Plan will include a significant funding of cross border links has led to some complaints about such an idea here.

Sometimes you can’t make this stuff up. On the day that Roche launches Fianna Fáil electoral register campaign with the aim of “encouraging young people to get on the electoral register,” they are the only party not to turn up at a student electoral registor drive at NUI Galway organised by the Political Debate Society [...]

Síle de Valera has confirmed what she first said last February, that she will step down as junior minister for education in December. Thus Bertie’s clumsy attempt to ease her out sooner eventually bears fruit, though perhaps not soon enough to give someone else a shot at a higher constituency profile with the job. [...]

From RTE:
Workers from Romania and Bulgaria will still have to apply for work permits in Ireland even after their countries join the European Union on 1 January next year. The announcement was made this afternoon by Micheál Martin, Minister for Enterprise, Trade & Employment, who said they would be given preference over nationals from outside [...]

Damian Blake is trying to get bloggers to start having their voices heard about Road Deaths. He wants us to:

Write a post on your own blog;
Tag it with “roadsafetyblog,” link to this post or add a comment below with the link;
If you don’t have a blog, you can comment here;
Most importantly, we need your suggestions [...]

On Friday I spoke with Senator Tom Morrissey of the Progressive Democrats at the end of the party’s ‘A New Heart for Dublin’ conference, which detailed their idea of redeveloping Dublin Port into a residential area. Senator Morrissey is the man spear-heading the idea, and the conference was launched by Michael McDowell, where he spoke [...]

This is a little delayed as I should have posted this on Saturday. Anyway, here it is now.
To find out what the Limerick Blogger Election Project is all about, head here.

What has changed since 2003 that requires a reevaluation of the right to silence and the presumption of innocence?
In 2003 the Minister “rejected a proposal from an expert review group to bring in legislation allowing a court to draw inference from an accused’s refusal to provide information while being questioned by the Gardai. The proposal [...]

Damien Blake, a FF County Councillor from Donegal appeared in today’s Sunday Times for stating the obvious: that the electronic voting system the government spent €52 million on buying and still spend €2000 euro a day storing should never be used. “I am unaware of any impartial, independent person who knows what they [...]

The Labour Party is seeking a mandate from the electorate based on its election strategy, which was adopted by the vast majority of delegates at Party Conference and clearly sets out our preference for government. Despite the recent polls, it won’t be until much closer to the election that we will see whether people [...]

Notwithstanding the apparent temptation to roll a St. Andrews ratification into a general election, it looks now that the government is backing away from a combined vote in March next year. This means that Attorney-General Rory Brady has more things to think about.

Edit: It seems he has changed tack slightly since 2003 when he dropped similar plans to curb the right to silence where he said: “I am more concerned that a trial should be about the facts of the case rather than what a person said or did not say in a police station,” (from the [...]

It’s an indication of the politics of the day that the opposition are trying to get legs on costs. Press releases follow front-page splashes, calls for Cullen to come clean on costs. “He is a crap manager, make it stick” comes the instructions from the press room in the bowels of opposition HQ. We know [...]

On October 7th, I invited all candidates in the upcoming General Election to write an article for the Limerick Blogger as part of the Limerick Blogger Election Project. Candidates were invited to submit an article either about Limerick, or to tell us why we should vote for them. The first article came from [...]

As reported in today’s Irish Independent, an opinion poll by conducted by Public Opinion Ltd. for The Mayo Advertiser has found that 45% of voters in Mayo support the Shell To Sea campaign to have the terminal moved offshore, with 15% supporting Shell and 40% having no opinion. The opinion poll reflects the recent TNS/MRBI [...]

A report from today’s Irish Times states that the Government has refused a request from Senator David Norris to take legal steps to ensure that over 700 graduates of Trinity College, who were disenfranchised because of a misplaced file, can be allowed to vote if there is a Seanad election before June of next year. [...]