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

Well known County councillor Maurice Hickey gives his thoughts on Lisbon
The night before pollin’, a crowd of fellas in the pub in Teerawadra gathered around the pool table and divided themselves into teams of “Yes’s” and “No’s” . It was agreed to play for Lisbon; if the “yes’s” won they’d all vote “yes” and if [...]

David Miliband early today said
[Reports the British favour changing the treaty and forcing a second vote] were “not true” and said there were “relevant points” that the Irish government had to have time to address - as many of the issues raised by the “no campaign” in Ireland, such as abortion and conscription, “didn’t have [...]

The Eu Barometer results are up.
Edit: They seem to have taken it down. Copy here fl_245_en
Anaysis Soon
Graphs below fold.

Photo owned by azrainman (cc)
According to the The Times.
Initially, Mr Sarkozy was furious with the Irish. “They are bloody fools,” he told aides, according to le Canard Enchaîné weekly. “They have been stuffing their faces at Europe’s expense for years and now they dump us in the s***.”Initially, Mr Sarkozy was furious with the [...]

I haven’t posted though its a topic I have wondered about for a while. Newstalk’s Brenda Power took to calling civil  servants in the HSE a while back in response to calls made to her phone-in show. Callers who had issues could expect them to be followed up by Power with calls made live on [...]

For reasons that I’m still trying to understand, but which are real and cannot be written off, there has been a significant growth in eurosceptic sentiment in Ireland. But wait, I don’t mean that euroscepticism is suddenly widespread and deep. Nor that it was the key factor in the recent outcome. No, but it has [...]

Conor and Richard  have spent a lot of time deconstructing the poll “data” that has been circulating around the two major broadsheets in the past few days. Not alone does the data not tally in some cases (under-15s voting?, 105% of the electorate giving a response?) it is still not publicly available to peruse days after [...]

There’s been so much debate in the past week about the sneaky underhanded reasons why 53% of the population voted no to Lisbon. First, No Voters were a bunch of unreformed republicans; yesterday it emerged they were in league with UK fascists and jailbirds.
But it’s always gone unquestioned that the Yes Voters were a happy [...]

I posted after Friday’s results were finalised that Enda Kenny could well find himself in the most precarious position of the three major party leaders. Kenny has increasingly bolshie elements within the party, a few more years in opposition and the pressure of maintaining progress next year to deal with and no foreign negotiations to [...]

Today’s scenes in the EU Parliament, as detailed by Simon here, show a particular hypocrisy on the part of the protesters who urge the EU to ‘Respect’ the Irish vote. However they are not hypocrites because they only wish to respect the Irish voice now as opposed to a few centuries ago, as was oddly [...]

Personnally I have a lot of respect for the EU Parliamentarians but sometimes you have to dispare.  Take this exchange Via EU Observer.
“You ignore the voters, you are destroying democracy, and you have shown that you will stop at nothing,” said Nigel Farage, head of the UK Independence Party, accusing mainstream politicians of creating a [...]

Much of the talk around the result of the Lisbon Treaty is how Ireland is under pressure to sort it out. But we are not the only ones.
No pressure should be exerted on the Czech Republic to force it to quickly ratify the Lisbon treaty, Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek (senior ruling Civic Democrats, ODS) [...]

McCreevy Urged to Resign
Charlie McCreevy was urged to resign over his comments on the EU Treaty. Should he go?

Brigid Laffan gives her analysis of the Lisbon Referendum in today’s Irish Times suggesting that we are in a minority of one, with scepticism rising about our commitment to Europe and the EU. Vincent Browne is not in agreement - it will plod along as usual.
I am minded to agree with him, it will be [...]

Referendum: Populism -v- Democracy
The concept of a referendum gets the opendemocracy treatment in light of our vote last Thursday. Scepticism about its merits as fully democratic are examined and its a very interesting read.

The Dublin LGBTQ Pride Festival is well underway, and continued yesterday evening with the annual debate in the Walton Theatre in TCD at 7.30pm. The motion for discussion was : “Same-Sex Couples Want Access to Civil Marriage, not Civil Partnerships”Chair: Sen. Ivana BacikProp: Sen. David Norris & Ailbhe Smyth (MarriagEquality)Opp: Neil Ward (Dublin Pride) & [...]