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

Last week the EU representation here unveiled their film making competition Democracy and Dialogue to run at Darklight Film Festival in Dublin. Its an excellent idea (anyone who remembers how much fun Votetube yielded will attest to that)- which like their help with our conference doesn’t push any agenda. For readers and contributors who fancy [...]

We can see already that there are groups with a multitude of colours sharpening swords for the impending Battle for Lisbon. This time though it appears it will be a battle not of parties but of people. The Yes side has conscripted an array of celebrities to their army including Bill Cullen, Eimear Quinn (Of Eurovision fame, apparently) and [...]

So, ‘turns out that Denis O’Brien has done interviews with all the Sunday broadsheets, The Sunday Times was just the first to update its website, hence was the centre of all the talk online, including my earlier post. Yes, the O’Brien spin cycle has gone into overdrive. Apart from the (Murdoch-owned) Sunday Times’ interview mentioned [...]

Someone has finally reported on the contents of the Moriarty Tribunal’s Preliminary Report – it has been under media embargo since November. Mark Tighe of the Sunday Times interviewed Denis O’Brien who helpfully revealed some of the embargoed contents. The story is summed up in the opening two paragraphs (a sign of a well-written piece) – [...]

The PD’s long goodbye is almost, nearly, complete, The Irish Times reports. They had what will likely be their last meeting yesterday. While the story itself is of little interest – we all knew it was on the way – the following section made me raise an eyebrow… Mr Grealish also expressed confidence that he, [...]

The Irish political parties seem to be set on advising the Irish people to go begging to the EU to be please “let in”. The number of politicians and public figures who have spoken out recently about the “need to be part of Europe” has multiplied at an astonishing rate. All and sundry seem to [...]

RTE this evening – The National Assets Management Agency is to take control of Ireland’s top 50 property developers who have loans of €30bn by Christmas.  NAMA will take on €22bn of loans for properties based in the UK – the majority of which are within the M25 motorway around London.  That area is enjoying [...]

President McAleese has signed the Criminal Justice Bill and Defamation Bill into law. Last night the Council of State discussed the bills in what many interpreted to be a symbolic, or tokenistic, meeting. This morning they were signed into law. Step in which direction? I know one or two regular participants on this website thought [...]

Minister for Foreign Affairs Micheal Martin is in charge of the Lisbon II campaign.  With summer schools apparently forming the main forum for policy debate with the Dail in recess, he was perhaps giving us a preview of what the Yes campaign will look like in this evening’s remarks to the MacGill event.  Writing as [...]

Sinn Féin lost their third councillor since the June local elections on Saturday. Lousie Minihan, a Dublin City Councillor from the Ballyfermot/Drimnagh ward left the party, taking her seat with her. She told The Irish Times that she believed Sinn Fein was no longer focused on “ending British rule in Ireland and the establishment of [...]

Dan Boyle is on the war path again. A statement released through the Green Party communications office following his speech at the MacGill Summer School today said… Addressing the MacGill Summer School in Glenties, Co Donegal, the Green Party Finance spokesperson said progress required a prompt end to the culture of ‘No Blame – No [...]

In case you missed it, Ruairi Quinn called for the establishment of a Minister for Public Service Reform the other day. I’m going to claim partial credit for that idea.  I can’t remember whether I actually said it to Ruairi himself, but I was punting the idea around the Labour Party backrooms for a couple [...]

Ronan Lyons of Daft shows just how unconnected our woes are to the global downturn. It’s even understandable to non-economists.

The final sticking plaster to put Humpty Dumpty Ireland together again is the Commission on Taxation report, due for presentation to the Minister for Finance at the end of the month. It’s the flip side of the coin to last week’s An Bord Snip Nua, or McCarthy Report, which sets out the agenda for fixing [...]

Originally posted last week but got somewhat lost in the swathe of Snip posts. Bumped back to top in hope more debate will ensue. – Mark – For years now the main debate about education policy in Ireland is about the re-introduction of university fees.  Never mind the overcrowding of class rooms or the provision [...]

Re: the cuts in the Defence Forces proposed by the McCarthy Report.

Headscratching stuff. The Defence Forces have already been pared down to the bone from a decade-long transformation arising from the PricewaterhouseCoopers report in the Nineties. So where is the ‘fat’ meant to come from, exactly?