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

A big thanks to everyone who made count day and the election coverage in this place so spectacular. From a standing start we had people communicating with us from around the country feeding information to us as soon as it was breaking in the count centres. The people who read, contributed to and helped out [...]

Press statment issued:
The Green Party would like to confirm that contact has been made by the Fianna Fáil party in relation to a possible exchange of policy documents.
The Green Party is considering all related matters and will respond over the coming days.

We are always giving out about RTE, the State of Us was dire, Fair City risible, and Killinascully is a vacuous black hole of comedy which has all the laughter sucked out.
But what about RTE’s election coverage? It was supposed to be the most extensive coverage ever and sure enough the RTE TV studio [...]

In true News of the World fashion, it is safe to call the Green Party press release a ‘come and get me plea’. The Greens issued a short and sweet statement as follows;
Following meetings with Fine Gael and Labour, the Green Party is awaiting a response on the viability of an alternative Government. Trevor Sargent [...]

We are looking at the seats that the opposition did not take that could have won them the election. We already have 2 here  what follows is the next 2 and the result

So much of what occured after the Belfast Agreement is so hidden from open scrutiny that it is often a case of paying your money and take your choice of who was responsible for who ultimately collapsed the immediate outworking of that deal. Republicans blame unionists, and vice versa.

From Thursday’s Irish Times, it seems that Bertie’s program manager, Gerry Hickey, is conducting some of the outreach to potential coalition partners –
Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael have also been in contact with the five Independent TDs. One, Finian McGrath, confirmed to The Irish Times that he had met the Taoiseach’s programme [...]

The drunk and the powerful came together, they came with their wives and their fans, they slapped backs and winked at each other for they knew what so many had denied for so long - that Fianna Fail was going to win the 2007 general election. They gathered in groups of two and three, these [...]

One of the main victims of the “squeeze” on smaller parties in this year’s General Election was undoubtedly Sinn Féin who ended up losing a seat rather than making gains as predicted.
So what went wrong for the party?

Looks like those who listen to Radio 1 once Dave is over are in for a treat. At 8 o’clock tonight, a documentary which followed three female candidates in Dublin Central will air. It follows Fianna Fail candidate Mary Fitzpatrick (lost), Green Party’s Patricia McKenna and Sinn Fein’s Mary Lou McDonald. It seems like it [...]

RTE report that Fianna Fail have begun contacting independent TDs about the possibility of forming a government. The Progressive Democrats, Sinn Fein and Labour are meeting to outline their positions today. Liz McManus on the News at One has said the “doesn’t see it” happening that Labour would enter government without Fine Gael leading the [...]

Gerry Adams now says that the general election in the Irish Republic was always going to be difficult for his Sinn Féin party. Yet, like any good boxing pro, he talked a good fight at the time. If he had doubts during the campaign, he didn’t let it show. [Good discussion where this blog was [...]

Labour/Fine Gael/Green missed out by 7 seats. Where were these 7 seats that they could have won that would have won the election. Here is 3 seats that decided the outcome.

A very interesting fact jumped out from some notes I was making as I re-read the results from the weekend (yes, I am that sad). The victory for Fianna Fail lay in a number of vital areas. Primary among those was the manner in which they secure seats in three seat constituencies.

…but were they really beyond attack for their management of it?

Martyn Turner’s cartoon for Tuesday’s Irish Times is extremely funny, not least because it uses as a reference the previous day’s front page photo of grand-dad Bertie.  It doesn’t quite map though, as Bertie is holding the twins himself in the cartoon whereas the proud parents had them in the photo.  Of course the tribunal [...]