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

For one thing, AIB is a lot more accident-prone.  There was accidental overcharging that the Financial Regulator might have known about before they said they did.  There was that awkward routing of Goodbody’s transactions in AIB shares through the well-known financial centre of Nevis.  There was those accidental hundreds of millions dollars lost in their [...]

Last night on TV3′s Nightly News with Vincent Browne, he weighs in against RTE’s report.  About 8:30 minutes in.

#Picturegate In the Dail this morning: The Ceann Comhairle has prevented opposition parties in the Dail from raising questions this morning about the RTE decision to apologise to the Taoiseach over a news report on Tuesday night.

Libertas want you to draw them a BillBoard. Saves money on hiring Advertising Staff I guess. Crowd Sourcing is all the rage these days.  From Libertas  In contrast with the Brussels bureaucrats who are spending 28 million euro of taxpayers’ money  on an advertising campaign for the European elections, Libertas today launched a competition for [...]

Brian Cowen was speaking at some conference today where a panel of international experts stated the obvious need to fix the system of toxic debts and bad bank management practices. I suppose that means getting fingers from the till. NESC meet to advise government on the path forward in social partnership talks. Business interests are [...]

So begins another day of picturegate. So what have we learned today in the Newspapers. GOVERNMENT PRESS secretary Eoghan Ó Neachtain has said he did not consult the Taoiseach or anyone else before making a complaint to RTÉ about a news item relating to the hoax nude portraits. Basically Cowen did not ask RTE to [...]

God almighty, so far Google News has over 80 sources covering the picturegate saga. The whole thing is an abject lesson in taking a position of international derision (for a budget that looks more like a lump of swiss cheese) and cementing that ‘laughing stock’ status with a rumpus about nude pictures of your Taoiseach [...]

As BNIFFO-gate rumbles on, it’s easy to forget that the European Union is essentially in crisis today.  People are racking their brains to remember the last time that a government collapsed while holding the EU Council Presidency, but the Czech government has certainly picked a most inconvenient time to do so: half way through its [...]

An update on the picturegate craziness, I am reading through a load of new blogs thanks to all the links from people covering the audio. Show your opposition to censorship by purchasing a t-shirt! Anway right now it looks like the artist is with Gardai. BBC reports: On Tuesday, the National Gallery said they had [...]

So the blogosphere is a blaze with the whole picturegate thing. But lets look at this beyond the hysterical Stalin reference and the governments reaction. Was this picture Satire and if it was what was point the artist was making? Or was it just a cheap shot at Cowen’s not so Adonis looks.

According to Ray D’Arcy on Today FM, whose researcher had been in touch with the artist of the paintings at the centre of #picturegate, the Gardai were in to the offices yesterday looking for email communications between the team and the artist. According to D’Arcy the team were told by gardai who showed up that [...]

So said The Gardai when they went into the Ray D’Arcy show office to find out who the artist was that put up the nude pictures of Brian Cowen in the National Gallery. Now the story was a bit embarrasing to Brian Cowen and I can image that he would be not to happy about [...]

Just for people who might not have seen the second picture. The London Times has the second one. (Top bit only though)

Since they cannot get a hold of the artist – and the relevant authorities are trying – the government returned to the scene of the crime to get an apology for Brian Cowen and the office of the Taoiseach. RTE took down their report from last night’s Nine O Clock news of Cowen’s nude art [...]

From the Irish Independent FINE Gael has formulated a radical €11bn stimulus plan for the economy which would see some of the State’s ‘crown jewels’ sold off to create green and hi-tech jobs. Now I thought they meant the actual Irish Crown Jewels which were robbed in 1907. But no they mean the ESB international [...]

Last night’s Nine News on RTE had a hilarious feature on an artist whose paintings of a nude Brian Cowen made it into some of Dublin’s most notable galleries for a while. Guerilla art and all that. It seems that the clip from the relevant Nine News last night is no longer available online. Go [...]