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

The Damian Green MP row, that is.  Arrested and detained for 9 hours by the London Metropolitan Police, and his Commons office searched, all apparently in connection with materials that he might have received as a MP.  Part of the confusion seems to be around what his rights as a MP are, as these things [...]

Here’s the Dept of Finance statement issued late last evening about the Minister’s discussion with the banks.  I think we know why some banks didn’t want to be in the guarantee scheme: those in the scheme can be made an offer they can’t refuse: to merge.

Enda Kenny and David Cameron met for just under an hour yesterday.  It’s an interesting pairing (photo).  As Enda told the Irish Times, they have the common predicament of being in opposition against a long-standing incumbent party.  The actual common policy areas are tricky.  As Guido Fawkes has emphasized, the un-Labour approach to coping with [...]

Mary Harney‘s expensive trip to Houston and Phoenix. The FAS/Florida row is not the only time the issue of her travel costs has arisen.

So the government think that it is unpatriotic to shop in the North. For god sake Cop the F**k on. Is that the state of the government? That the best they can do to solve (“If the shut me up who’ll take my place”) the current crisis is to provoke the idea of patriotism. Dear [...]

Crisis? It’s baby-crunching time. We no longer have the luxury of attacking others’ prescriptions – those issued by the Government, employers’ spokespersons and stockbroker economists. The proverbial punter at the bar is impatient: ‘So what’s your big idea?’ It’s a fair question. Let’s be under no illusion. The right is driving this debate. And the [...]

From todays Irish Times PROTESTANT SCHOOLS appear to be battening down the hatches and cutting spending in response to recent Budget cutbacks. Like all schools, they must absorb the reductions in grants and substitution payments. But for them, the pain goes deeper. Without prior notice, a special support services grant paid to 21 Protestant schools [...]

Irish Times background on the inevitable Rody Molloy resignation – Discussions had taken place all day yesterday between officials of the Department of Enterprise, Mr Molloy and the chairman of Fás, the trade union leader, Peter McCloone. Ms Coughlan, who was on a trade mission to Dubai, spoke by phone to Mr Molloy and Mr [...]

Recent revelations of lavish spending by Rody Molloy and his team at the head of FÁS have provoked an outcry. At a time when citizens are experiencing a painful decline in their standard of living, people have learned that the state agency partly responsible for generating employment has been splashing out a shameful abundance of [...]

Fianna Fáil are seeing something of a bounceback in tomorrow morning’s Sunday Business Post RedC poll.  The numbers, as reported by RTÉ News: Fianna Fáil: 30 (+4) Fine Gael: 35 (+2) Labour Party: 14 (-1) Sinn Féin: 8 (-2) Green Party: 5 (-1) Independent/Others: 8 (-2) The poll is a week earlier than normal (normally [...]

Our economic woes may be at an end – Suzy has the scoop. The package will be all about the three T’s – ‘Timely, Targeted and Temporary’. It will include proposals for tax cuts, fast tracking of Structural Funds to stimulate growth, and a percentage of GDP (maybe 1% or maybe not) from member states. [...]

The Irish Times leads with is economic recovery plan – heavily weighted toward R&D, knowledge economy and associated buzzwords (not in so far as they are illegitimate only that they have no government backing – making them dead phrases). It occurs to me though that a real kick start plan would start with the sacking [...]

The Finance bill that was published yesterday got a lot of attention for getting rid of the JP McManus Cinderella Rule.  But there’s another provision that, to this tax non-specialist, looks designed to get a few London-based non-domiciled residents to move to Ireland.

Sarah Carey lifts the lid on the Lisbon campaign from inside the Sunday Times. This one, as they say, has juice with a second referendum coming up – always good to get the narrative up and running early. Politicians and commentators who argued for the Lisbon Treaty did so because they believed it was in [...]

But Brian Lenihan is ranked 18th out of 19 European finance ministers covered in the Financial Times’ latest ranking of their job performance (his predecessor was 4th last year).  Of course Lenihan is mainly being penalised by things that happened before him, but the “political ranking” will tend to reflect the recent impressions of the [...]

Well, that was some two weeks.  The Obama campaign is over – ending in victory, of course – and I’m back to Ireland today. (…well, it was “today” when I started writing this last Sunday.) The Obama campaign was, overall, a masterclass in grassroots activism.  The sheer numbers of people contributing to the campaign – [...]