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

Results: Quota 86, Doherty (SF) 103 and Kelly (LAB) 96 elected on first count.
Update 24/07:
Doherty (SF) 1st count
Ryan (Lab) 1st count
Moylan (FF) 14th count
Walsh (FF) 16th count
O’Brien (FF) 16th count
6 seats remaining
Seanad results at seanadrcount.ie and the Labour blog.

Rumours trickling out of the very long Seanad Count (due to end Friday) suggest that Alex White is currently topping his respective poll in the Cultural and Education panel. Apparently he is under 10 votes off the quota (around 175) which should see him elected relatively early on. With Labour having 130 odd votes one [...]

The overturning of the Monaghan Development plan by John Gormley has gotten increasingly tetchy as first Sinn Fein press released (three times in one day) to air their displeasure at the “anti-democratic” nature of Gormley’s decision to overturn the plan. The decision taken by Gormley lacked a mandate since his party only received 3% of [...]

John Gumley is not just after the corporations it seems he is also going to up the Litter fines on people, from €125 Euro to €150 Euro or a rise of 20%. The €125 fine was introduced in 2002. Since then inflation has increased a lot. Around 5% this year even. Lets take FinFacts Guinness [...]

Just when I was warming to John Gumley he went back to his old ways. Ahh well. From RTE;
Gormley targets chewing gum manufacturers. Now this is more of the usual lets scapegoat the corporations moronic shite. Gum on our streets is terrible and anyone who has stood on it will atest. But who ’s [...]

Pat Carey was talking today about plans in the programme for government to make registration of mobile phones compulsory. One wonders first how this would be enforced short of making the mobile companies responsible for the registration.
He agreed though that this would pose issues for privacy and civil liberties but the need to fight crime [...]

Over at the Washington Post Global website, Amar C. Bakshi is investigating how the world sees America. He’s looking for contributions so if you’ve got an opinion on America, Americans or American culture, just go here.
Amar has just finished up a stint in England and is currently touring India in his attempt to understand how [...]

According to tomorrow’s Sunday Business Post, Environment Minister John Gormley will soon present a memo to Cabinet with a view to reforming the election process for Senators.
The article doesn’t give too much detail on his plans, but the crux of his proposal is the suggestion to make the majority of Senators directly elected by the [...]

Howlin is reported in today’s Examiner as giving a speech in Wexford where he critiques Pat Rabbitte’s speech analysing the Labour election performance. Contrary to the benefit off the Mullingar Accord, Howlin argues that the accord led to negative camapaigning which might have led to Labour being seen as “whingers”. He goes on to suggest [...]

Just before the election Anthony Sheridan sent a letter of compliant to Donegal County Council about posters Pat “the Cope” Gallagher had erected posters which allegedly broke litter regulations. He has been for a while trying to get answers.
This is the reply he got.

The head of TCD floated the idea of bring back third level fees yesterday.
The Government should first decide what sums were needed to make all of them internationally competitive, and then decide how much it was prepared to pay and “how much should be contributed by those with most to gain - the students.
Now Britain [...]

I am sure this is probably illegal but someone has put their vote for seanad on Ebay . Interestingly enough it seems someone emailed Dan (the resident Irishelection.com candidate ) about it, so I can only guess that someone has emailed all the candidates about this. Surely no one will put a bid [...]

Ciaran Cuffe is surprised to learn that ballots for the Seanad election, for the TD/Senator/Cllr pool anyway, are not all that random.
Councillor Tom Kivlehan pointed out to me a curious aspect of the Senate Election. Each ballot is marked with a unique number on the back. Before I told him my number, he was able [...]

Votes for sale, blatant bribery for votes. Its is all there this year (and every year by the sounds of it). So what should we do about the Seanad? Has it any use at all? Should we abolish the upper house? Or for what purpose can it be reformed?
New poll on the right, any thoughts [...]

(All figures available from the Central Statistics Office website, here.

This is about as definitive as you can get.
The census figures show an Ireland that is undergoing huge change, but not quite in the way we have been told. First of all, the actual number of non-nationals employed in construction challenges the “common sense” view that [...]

A few months ago Michael Taft highlighted the fact that ESB prices were being kept artificially high to support competition. Now while Michael and me might disagree on alot I can not disagree with a policy that dictates the use of the common market (break up of the ESB is another option that I think [...]