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

Tim O’Malley Green Ink

As the selection convention for Meath West approaches, with Graham Geraghty in the running (by the way, as far as we can tell, Irish Election beat all the national media to the story that Geraghty was interested in running), the following are some of the rumours circulating among the Stop Geraghty campaign, as told to [...]

Word has reached me—not entirely confident about the source—that RTE have bought the rights to show Loose Change, the show about 9/11 being a government conspiracy, etc., etc. It will be interesting to see if the program discusses the reality behind some of the claims. Anyway, it might give Morgan Stack who we interviewed here [...]

In the run up to the election we are going to get loads of manifestos promising the sun moon and the stars. But do they actually deliver. In the first of I hope many I will try going through Fianna Fail and PD’s manifestos to see what they have promised and delivered and the other [...]

There seems to be a little falsehood going about the country this week. All the parties and papers seem to be at it.

Cowen’s mortgage tax concession wiped out by interest rate rise—Bruton
Mortgage rate jump tightens screw further on home buyers
ECB rate hike exposes cynical budget ploy—Boyle
Interest rate and VHI hikes hit Budget bonus (Irish Independent)
[...]

Considering some recent Fianna Fail press releases I am not surprised if they support this. From todays Indo
A PROPOSAL by rural publicans that they be compensated for financial losses due to random breath-testing has been branded as “nonsense”.
Ok fair enough publicans we will compensate you for losses due to random breath-testing if you compensate [...]

Budgets are like viewing an impressionist painting but in reverse: the closer you are the more clearly you can make out the image, the further back the more vague and indistinct. Stand far enough back and all you see is the frame. With budgets, instant analysis and frenetic comment eventually gives way, [...]

Blogorrah pointed us in the way of this new politican the other day.Fluffy McDowell the hip cafe gent. With the recent Week in Politics show saying that most people don’t like McDowell I guess this is a way of making people like him more. In this weeks episode out hero Fluffy appears in.

Talk about the publican party. Drinks companies must call time on drink price hikes for 2007 - Kelleher.
They should freeze the print of the pint at current levels so that publicans will not need to increase their prices to the consumer next year.
Ah the poor publicans, I don’t see any press releases calling for ice [...]

A very good year for Government.
Benchmarking has delivered huge increases in what theTD’s pay themselves.

So the budget is done. The government saying it’s the greatest thing since sliced bread, the opposition are saying it’s the worst thing since Hector, and smokers are complaining that along with smelling, they have to pay more. My heart bleeds. Now, I could try and analysis the entire thing but I think there are [...]

€500: that’s approximately what the surplus means to every man, woman, and child in Ireland today. What could you do with €500? Maybe buy a new government, or maybe add it with your neighbor’s €500 and help fix up the local medical facilities, or maybe your estate residents could help fund a rapid transit stop [...]

RTE are streaming the budget from their website.

From Breaking News: Fine Gael’s Padraig McCormack has decided to defend his Galway West seat next year (someone might correct me, but is that now four Fine Gael candidates? Surely one will have to drop out). No doubt good news for Fine Gael with McCormack having a good record of vote getting. It’s still a [...]

If there is a prize for political naivete, it should go to Tim O’Malley. He should have realised how rash it is for any Limerick politician to read scripts that are prepared for them by officials of the Department of Health. Look what happened to Michael Noonan. His political career nose-dived after some highly insulting [...]

Fine Gael and other members of the opposition are suffering a bout of selective amnesia.
Yesterday, Junior Minister for Health Tim O’Malley used his gob before he used his brain and made a statement on the Prime Time Investigates programme claiming that “some people” liked having waiting lists of children with mental problems as it gave [...]