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

More figures out today and another graph that made me wince… EDIT: In a comment Ben has drawn my attention to apparently incorrect reporting from RTÉ, The Irish Times and myself - according to Karl Whelan of Irish Economy the economy did not shrink by 8.5% as reported by, well, a lotta places [links coming], including [...]

Green members’ conference set for July The debate on Lisbon is underway as the Green Party look at getting their meeting out of the way on 18 July – can we expect the fireworks and close vote of last time out or will the Greens take part on the Yes side this time out?

It’s been announced that “An Bord Snip Nua” will report tomorrow on its proposed reductions in public expenditure and increases in public revenue. The report will go to the Minister for Finance. There is no indication of when a public version of the report will be made available.

Average public worker earns more than €50,000 a year Grist is added to the mill of An Bord Snip nua as the CSO figures on pay are released.

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Suzy is putting together some favourite moments from Questions and Answers ahead of tonight’s final show and looking for some awards categories too. I’m also thinking up awards categories that you might not hear of on tonights show. Care to add a few? Most frequent audience member award? There must be UCD Alumni (Kevin Barry [...]

An Bord Snip reports tomorrow, with cuts to social welfare and services likely to top its list of recommendations (if our Sunday’s are to be believed). In the meantime though, Brian Cowen has announced an Innovation taskforce whose aim will be something about getting Ireland toward the Smart Economy. The members will be people who [...]

Is Charlie McCreevy in the running to lead the No campaign for Lisbon II? asks Jamie Smyth of The Irish Times.

Michael Lowry released the statement below in the last hour, he’s airing some grievences about how he feels the Moriarty Tribunal is operating. Nobody seems to have done anything with it yet – maybe for reasons I am not aware of – the statement itself is fairly defensive.

That graph made me wince… The Quarterly National Household Survey (figures on unemployment) figures for the first quarter of 2009 were released today. You can read the document in PDF format here.

2007 is a critical year in the chronology laid out by the IMF report.   The Celtic Tiger Mark I had been dead since 2001 but even in 2007 there was still time to pull the game out of the fire on the property bubble Mark II version.  So where was fiscal policy?  Here is the [...]

If you’ve just sat down after a slap-up dinner and thought “hmm, I wonder what the International Monetary Fund have said about Ireland in their latest Staff Report” and considered jumping across to IMF.org, don’t bother. I’ll sum it up here for you. Note: This was a staff report – the IMF has a staff [...]

From last night’s debate on a private members motion (FG) on Crumlin cutbacks. During the debate in the Dail, Ms Harney said: “I find it strange that when we ask hospitals to make efficiency savings, some hospitals decide that the most sensitive area is the area that should be cut first.” Those nasty hospitals….taking spin [...]

Last night the government put forward plans to invest in jobs to the trade unions as part of the social partnership plans. The fund will initially consist of a €250 million investment with a possible pot of €1bn in theory.

Much of page 12 in today’s Irish Times is given to follow-up articles on yesterday’s conference on political reform. Like most conferences, it had its good parts and… I spent the day in a bunker-like lecture hall deep in the bowels TCD’s Arts Block listening to highly-informed journalists and academics. The vast majority of the speakers were either insightful, educational [...]

According the Irish Times the date for Lisbon II will be set for Friday October 2nd. It’s not a weekend and it would be preferable to have this vote at a time that suits many people. Nonetheless this is the date we have.