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

Employees of Thomas Cook branches in Dublin have locked themselves into the branch at the bottom of Grafton Street in a dispute over redundancy packages and the manner in which they were told they’d lost their jobs. I was down there for a time earlier speaking to a number of those involved.

Reading the Nama legislation is like staring at the sky on a clear winter’s night: before us a universe of bullet points – scattershot, random and infinite – each of them at first appearing whole and discreet but, when put to the lens, revealing a multitude of hidden meanings – just as the specs in [...]

Mr Justice Peter Kelly from the Commercial Court.  Read his in-depth demolition of the Liam Carroll companies’ bid to keep out the receiver being sought by ACC.   And he managed this level of analysis in just the couple of weeks since the ACC action started.   Or, if NAMA is going to take too long, why not get [...]

Came across this while watching Fantasy NFL videos on NFL. Yes people American Football. Do you think they have drunk the water in Galway recently?

Economics is not my forte, nor is it that of many of Irishelection’s stable of regular posters, yet it relates to much of our other content. I’m therefore going to curate the important commentary on the subject from elsewhere in the blogosphere and media and hopefully this post might provide a platform for an intelligent [...]

‘Ambitious action … to ensure the protection of our economy and the welfare of our people’ is how the Minister for Finance described the government’s draft legislation to establish NAMA, published earlier today. The full text of the Minister’s statement and the draft legislation can be found at www.finance.gov.ie The Dail will return on 16 [...]

I’m sure everyone is poring through the 136 pages of the draft NAMA legislation.  One quick point.  The legislation sets out many restrictions for who can be one of the 7 board members of NAMA (page 26).  Including that they can’t be members of the Oireachtas, local authorities, or European parliament, and they must be [...]

The Irish Examiner has an article today that illustrates the condition the property market is in at present. A new fully-fitted three bedroom house in Cavan can now be got for just €100,000 – howa’bout’cha knock a euro off that one, boys, make’er five-figure… The price has fallen by more than 50% since they originally went on the [...]

Woman goes missing in the Caribbean, turns up in Terminfeckin several years later.

Denis O’Brien and the Irish Taxpayer « Over there… An excellent look at Denis O Brien after his foray into the media on Sunday

Niall O’Dowd plays the “sure all ye Americans are Irish aren’t ye” card to ABC News. Turns out the Harvard professor arrested for attempting to break into his home is related to the cop who arrested him. Stretching it just a little, maybe?

An emigrant from Northern Ireland to the US who made millions in his new life has his teenage rebellious republican phase come back to haunt him.

I always liked Halloween as a child we used to play bobbing for coins, apples on a string, wear masks and try and frighten the disinterested cat, go down to the neighbours bomb fire that me and my friends had carefully built from random bits of wood from around their farm. It was always fun. [...]

Pharmacist anger over HSE mis-information The HSE is either incompetent (highly plausible) or far more devious in its spin than given credit for.

This useful piece of background information on  what ‘Nama’ really is arrived in my inbox this morning:

This might appear to be a little behind the curve, thanks to my first effort getting lost on the WP app. Anyway….. The response of Ceann Comhairle John O Donoghue to the reports of his extremely large expenses bills from his time in Arts, Sport and Tourism unveil a couple of things our erstwhile snippers [...]