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

It got lost in the focus on Fianna Fail’s good poll numbers last weekend, but governments are formed by TDs, not opinion polls, and in that regard the party suffered a blow with Jim Glennon’s decision not to run again in Dublin North.

Okay, so for Fine Gael and Labour the last weekend has been—and let’s be blunt—fairly abysmal. Desperately bad polls, which despite the best attempts of those who live and die by such data to spin them better (”it’ll take (one) or (two) or (three)—extend ad infinitum—to be sure of a trend… something suspiciously wrong with [...]

I thought I’d wrap up the coverage of Bertiegate here with a rather interesting item I stumbled across on the RTÉ news site earlier today: Swedish minister resigns over TV licence fee.

You know, it is not often we get to talk about Socialist Party policies here. I think that this may be the first post on the site about the party, but we do include their feed in the Party News section. But then, they have control of Indymedia so does it matter that much? [...]

Willie O’Dea has thrown in his hat in support of Eddie Wade running in the upcoming election. O’Dea believes that the county councillor should run as a fourth Fianna Fáil candidate.
He has also criticised the Fianna Fail party headquarters for not informing the angry Wade about the details of Bertie Ahern’s recent visit to Limerick.

The new Metro route has been announced (PDF here) and it’s posted below the fold.
Headline figures from Transport:

To accommodate an estimated 34 million passengers per year
17 minutes journey time from the city centre to Dublin Airport
26 minutes journey time from St Stephens Green to Swords
Trains every four minutes

I’ll be blogging here weekly in the run-up to the next election. I’m a Fianna Fail member of Letterkenny Town Council, elected in June 2004, and I served as Mayor of Letterkenny from June ‘05 to June ‘06.
I’m a Fianna Fail councillor, but I’m not a Fianna Fail blogger. I’m a very proud member and [...]

Labour has taken quite a hit in the recent opinion polls. When Pat Rabbitte was elected leader, I was pleased that the party would be led by someone who was capable of devising the kind of political strategy that might take the party beyond the limits of traditional labourism. While the party quickly dispensed [...]

What are these? See the Top Chumps homepage.

As you may have noticed, the latest Top Chumps have been uploaded to IrishElection.com thanks to the guys at Bifsniff.com. We are looking to begin to build up some momentum for the next couple of weeks so that enough interest is generated in getting decks published. This is where all you wonderful readers and bloggers [...]

Seamus Ryan is a sitting Labour Councillor from Waterford. He actively blogs at seamusryan.blogspot.com and for the forseeable future will be writing a weekly column for IrishElection.com, looking at politics from the front line, as it were. In the interests of balance, his column is part of a pair where the second column is written [...]

If the Taoiseach at any time resigns from office the other members of the Government shall be deemed also to have resigned from office, but the Taoiseach and the other members of the Government shall continue to carry on their duties until their successors shall have been appointed.
Bunreacht na h-Eireann, Article 28.11.1°
[...]

It seems abortion has been put back into the public domain after a survey claimed 60% support abortion in some cases, which the pro-life groups have said:
Given the way the questions were framed, the results are not at all surprising. The question dealing with abortion, for example, makes no distinction between ethical interventions in pregnancy [...]

It is incomprehensible that when Gardai are cracking down on drug barons, pills five times stronger than ecstasy can be bought over the counter in Ireland by anyone over the age of 18
So begins the Irish Examiner editorial on the legal availability of “mind altering drugs” in Ireland. It is, of course, old news. The [...]

I quite like McDowell and agree with his policies and mainly agree with what he says in this speech. However, there is a bit of fact checking that needs to be done. So I will look at this line:
The recent OECD report shows that in 1994, prior to liberalisation, Irish telecommunications charges were over 150% [...]

Carlow Nationalist
Carlow garda numbers have not increased in rural areas
Councillor reckons an airport for the Carlow area is a flier of an idea
Corkman
North Cork has highest rate of forced hospitalisation for mental illness
Donegal Democrat
Fianna Fail on target to win election
Galway Advertiser
Not enough places for “very disturbed children” says TD
The Kingdom
Minister’s attitude to Tralee jobs is [...]