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

The Irish Examiner is running a series at the moment of putting questions to various Government ministers. The minister facing questions for the next edition is Social and Family Affairs Minister Mary Hanafin.
Do you have a question you would like to put to Minister Hanafin? Send me an email (gavin AT gavinsblog DOT com) [...]

Even before the Irish people’s democratic decision to reject the fatally-flawed Lisbon Treaty, (which would have deepened the democratic-deficit in Europe still further), the source of Libertas funding was a bane of “yes” campaigners. To the elite, the possibility of the ‘mainstream’ parties being so decisively outspent by this upstart pro-business [...]

Is there a curse of Mahon? Added to the list of deceased on the witness lists comes today’s announcement that Albert Reynolds has “cognitive impairment” and cannot give evidence to the Tribunal. Albert has had a strange twilight to political career, having inadvertedly given his name to the standard libel defence in English [...]

Its the same as number 1 and many subsequent solutions, the Indo has the leaked idea (is it really news though? - its been around for ages as the only solution). It beats the deadlines but only just.
THE guarantee of holding on to a European Commissioner will be the carrot for a [...]

Well the story of the US campaign season, how a cartoon managed to raise $95,000 in days for a new aspiring politician, Sean Tevis in Kansas. If you’ve ever read XKCD read on. (Wikipedia entry for XKCD)

The WTO talks are a little like the Tribunals. For the most part, progress is confined to a tiny box on page 8 of the Irish Times or Indo unless the leading lights drag it up the agenda. While both are meaningful in themselves and have great symbolic (on the perception of cleansing politics or [...]

It has been noted in a few places over the weekend that the grand alliance on Europe, the three main parties plus the Greens and PDs, was beginning to take some strain. Yesterday’s poll released by Open Europe seems to provide further evidence of that strain. Labour appear to be distancing themselves from any “Tallaght [...]

It’s funny how transparent the government’s media trickery is.  Everyone knows that this is the time of year when Cabinet members will be on their holliers, except for the occasional pesky event like the WTO talks in Geneva, or Martin Cullen’s no doubt necessary 3 week jaunt to Beijing.  So what are the ways of [...]

Update: Head office must have been worried for the press released the result this evening. It is a blow for any who may have wished to see a return of the Spring dynasty to this particular fold as Senator Alan Kelly took the nomination for Labour candidate for MEP in the South. It was widely [...]

Irishelection.com is delighted to announce ‘Green Ink’s Week‘ a new feature to the site where cartoon and blogging legend Green Ink posts his reflections on the week. Each Friday the exclusive cartoon will be posted to the front page of irishelection.com by the artist presently known as Green Ink (but aims for a future title [...]

I was delighted that Formula One boss, Max Mosley, won his case against the News of the World who paid one of his prostitutes to secretly film one of their orgies. The paper ran the headline “F1 boss has sick Nazi orgy with 5 hookers”. Mosley sued the paper for invasion of privacy. The paper [...]

The Sleep of Sarkozy produces Sarkozy…

A second Irish referendum? Eurocrats have a better idea
Dan Hannan at the Telegraph reckons the plan in Brussles is not for a second referendum but instead to parachute in sections of the Lisbon Treaty via legislation.

Usually not a fan, but Diarmaid Ferriter’s in The Examiner today is well worth the read.
Some of the end-of-term report cards will make for sorry reading, with the exception perhaps of the Green party leader, John Gormley, who has made the transition from the opposition benches to cabinet with singular ease and who is basking [...]

It may be a catchy means of getting around the 9 and 15 month deadlines that seem to be naturally occuring to the EU leadership, but rerunning Lisbon next June in conjunction with European Parliament and Local elections has been ruled out by most parties. Not least because another ‘no’ vote could seep over into [...]

Not sure if it was the Veni Vedi Vici, as it was in the UK when Nicolas and Carla wowed and charmed all around them. Yet he came and he did no more damage. Indeed his press conference was typical Sarkozy fare, combative, unflinching with its own gallic twist - ‘if I come it is [...]