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

When I read this on RTE, “Dept to appeal ruling in dyslexia case,” about the Department of Education discriminating against people I was not sure how I should responded. I haven’t been made this angry by Brian Dobson since the time when they would interrupt the Den to bring coverage of the Budget. I used [...]

I read this today in The Paper Cowen urged to transfer €100m credit card duty to charities:
Thirteen TDs and senators tabled a motion at the Fianna Fáil parliamentary party, last night, seeking to earmark the €100 million raised annually for Irish charities. The proposal is the brainchild of former KPMG accountant David Burke and is [...]

Brian Boru made a very good point by referring to the caveat in the FF/PD manifesto.
If economic circumstances allow.
The estimates for the tax take for 2006 were grossly underestimated. Whether this was Fianna Fail fudge (probably) or incompetence (probable, but unlikely as all civil servants were awarded the 100% maximum top-up bonus proposed under the [...]

Back at the Blogging the Election conference, an idea crept up on me of using YouTube and cheap video technology to bring the real Irish politician to light. The idea in essence is see if the people standing for election are as generically amenable as they often seem to portray themselves as being. After all, [...]

There’s been an interesting trend in the recent TG4 polls conducted by TNS/MRBI compared to national figures being delivered by RedC and TNS/MRBI in the Sunday Business Post and The Irish Times respectively. Added to this can be the reporting in The Kerryman of two polls seen there.
There appears to be an increasing trend [...]

Enda Kenny is a fan of ITV’s Bad Lads Army Extreme . From Irish Indepedent:
Boot camps for bad boys will be created around the country if Fine Gael wins the next election.
A punishment proposal being developed for the party’s election manifesto would see the Army putting young offenders through a regime of spit-and-polish in order [...]

The Internet and it’s social networking tools such as Flickr and YouTube have drastically changed the form and structure of electioneering within the US. In this article, I’ll outline some of the recent changes and give some examples of technology being applied to aid in campaigning. (PDF Full Text version.)

Looks like Labour is again splitting on an issue not long after the youth wing voted against the Fine Gael pact. This time on the issue of Gay marriage. From the Sunday Business Post:
Labour Party leader Pat Rabbitte faces threats of resignation from members of the party’s Equality Group if the parliamentary party fails to [...]

Two quick notes. First, a row about a senior English policeman’s remarks over what gets classified as paedophilia in cases involving statutory rape points to obstacles that may face any Irish legal reforms in this area. And on a slightly related note, Brian Lenihan has made clear that the government’s position is they they [...]

Irish Times suggests the PDs are lobbying Brian Cowen quite hard for another 2% cut in the top rate of tax from 42% to 40%. Cowen has signalled his own preference for recourse to adjustment of tax bands and increased use of tax credits. If the report is to be believed, Fianna Fail are—correctly—worried about [...]

Not more polls, you say! But it appears that Labour could be back with a bang in Kerry. The Kerryman reports that two polls in North Kerry show Labour Cllr. Terry O’Brien winning a seat if not topping the poll. It also suggests that Martin Ferris will be fighting it out with Fine Gael’s Jimmy [...]

In the Young Ones, Rik Mayle played ‘Rick,’ the agit-prop politics student who shouted ‘fascist’ whenever he started to lose an argument. The character was a satirical swipe at all those mid 80s student lefties who simply regurgitated Trotskyite slogans and spat out their venomous hatred of the Tories and Margaret Thatcher at every available [...]

The somewhat portentous title above is to hail the arrival of a new blog called Notes on the Front. The perspective of the author, Michael Taft, an old friend of mine, is firmly that of the socialist left, although at this stage he would welcome even a bit of muscular social democracy! His most [...]

Estimates for Public Services (Abridged Version), 2007.

Willie O’Dea has been long been known as the intellectual power house of Irish Politics with his Samsonite Mustache so this story is of course a surprise. The Limerick Blogger points me to this story. Seemingly, Willie pulled out of a book launch when he found out the book was about Sean South, the IRA [...]

Giving in to terrorism seems to be the mantra down in Green Central:
Deputy Gormley said, “Security experts agree that this latest terror threat is ominous and should be taken very seriously. Stepping up security to the required level could prove to be extremely expensive and, as we know from the London bombings, does not always [...]