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

There is a set of very interesting charts with this Wall Street Journal article (should be free access via Google News) about investor expectations of the likelihood that EU countries could default on their debt.  The shocker: for Ireland, the probability is 10%.  That’s huge for a rich country.  We’re joined at that level by [...]

Is it really a big story? Really? Personal insults do not mark out a quality debater but nonetheless the big picture last night was that many thousands turned out in the hail, sleet and snow to protest at education cuts. Those cuts have yielded horror stories around the country. Like the school in Cloneen, Tipp [...]

Contrary to what many government TDs might like you to believe, the past is not a foreign country. In 2002, when the Fianna Fail promised to invest in the education system, it was because Ireland needed to improve its system if its youth were to receive their right to an adequate education and if Ireland [...]

Back before the election.Much of the criticism of the green party was that they they would jump ship the first sign of trouble. ( I think some Fianna Failers actually laid this taunt at the feet of the Greens before the election but can’t find the quote.) Well the first sign of trouble was back [...]

Last week I posted the odds of when the next election would be. And the odds for an early election have dropped. They are now. Still a bit of value there I think. I wonder have they been getting much business on 2009 since the odds have halfed. 2008 20 – 1 2009 4 – [...]

I am just wondering if any of our readers/bloggers are heading along to the education protest at Leinster House tomorrow evening? If so – and you fancy doing some blogging from there – could you get in touch via the comments or the email to arrange something with us here? Thanks

Fine Gael’s Leo Varadkar offers his view on how the SBP Opinion Poll would translate in an election.

Think tank: Time for democracy to click into place Dan Sullivan gets himself into The Sunday Times, calling for the internet to connect citizens to a more meaningful democracy. Its an argument I agree with wholeheartedly myself. Have a read and let him know what you think.

Where is the radical reform in the civil service ? Sunday Times figures show that almost every civil servant in the country has received a pay increase. The Government seemed happy to let the civil servants write the budget and now we find that the oversight process for employees in the civil service, the Performance [...]

Peruse the diagram above. The green/yellow states are those voting with DREs with a voter-verified paper-trail (VVPR) (except in Tennessee, Colorado and Maryland where the relevant legislation has been passed but doesn’t come into force this year) and with/without (respectively) a paper audit-trail. The red-states are those requiring neither a paper-audit-trail nor a voter verified [...]

The Irish Times has a very good editorial today. The implications of universality. At its heart are two very different ways of delivering State benefits and services. One way is to make those services – health, education, and welfare benefits – universally available. The other is to target them at those who are most in [...]

Fianna Fail suport plummets after a Red C poll for tomorrow’s Sunday Business poll has Fine Gael ahead of them. Taken on Monday-Wednesday it was always going to be bad but this is probably beyond where TDs thought it might go. Fianna Fail are on 26%, seven points behind Fine Gael on 33% and Labour [...]

REd Mum has the post on Michael Kennedy TD at the pensioner protest on Wednesday. He spoke of the money given to single parents and their ‘10 kids’ and, get this, ‘FREE HOUSES’. (They are actual quotes.) Seriously my daughter is 16 years old now and he is saying there are free houses, given what [...]

This is an excerpt from the NY TIMES about Greenspan’s grilling by lawmakers in Washingon: Mr. Greenspan conceded a serious flaw in his own philosophy that unfettered free markets sit at the root of a superior economy. “I made a mistake in presuming that the self-interests of organizations, specifically banks and others, were such as [...]

Yesterday, in the aftermath of the climbdown regarding the Medical Cards fiasco, I read a post on the weblog of Green Party Justice Spokesperson Ciarán Cuffe, which dealt with the Medical Cards issue. After reading the post, I gave him my view of the Fianna Fáíl / Green coalition, and put some questions to him [...]