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

Simon gave me a bell in work today. It seems he has been doing some research into rulings by the European Court of Justice and the EU Court of First Instance on asset management and the legalities surrounding the application of state aid. The beauty of working in journalism is you can spend time checking [...]

The Irish Times article draws a riposte from Dept of Finance economist Alan Ahern as well as the likely intervention of the Minister later today. Following our report yesterday that the High Court has set a discount level at around 50% this is another major heave against the NAMA policy. The thread over at Irisheconomy.ie [...]

Edward Kennedy, Senate Stalwart, Dies – Obituary (Obit) – NYTimes.com

McGarr solicitors are currently engaged in an interesting process of over and back with the Dept of the Taoiseach regarding the government’s claims of a EU-sanctioned formula for the fair value that NAMA would pay for assets. In the course of which we learn that the High Court has again given direction to the scale [...]

Gavin has done up the chronology of the John O Donoghue story including the emergence of government talking points during the course of the tale unfolding. It makes for interesting reading especially considering just how serious the scale of John O Donoghue’s claims were and the role of the crowd in bringing the connections of [...]

I was at a meeting tonight for a local Yes to Lisbon campaign and someone brought along a COIR leaflet, then I came home and I saw Evert’s post – it really highlighted how the No Side could win and how the Yes Side are actually at a disadvantage. How? They can afford to misinform, [...]

While I work on a bigger post here’s just a few little facts on how the run-up to the next Lisbon Treaty referendum is played: The Irish government removes legislation that made for equal airtime for both sides of the debate. The Irish government enters into a contract with a PR firm to handle publicity [...]

You’d swear Lisbon wasn’t on the cards. It’s not in the papers. I read Saturday’s Irish Times, it has one Lisbon article on page 8. Today’s Sunday Business Post has nothing. Looking at their website, The Sunday Times has a piece about the spending involved from private groups – not the politics though. The Tribune [...]

Brian Cowen wants everyone to know how many international endorsements NAMA has – “The proposal we have brought forward is on the basis of the best international advice, including the European Commission and the International Monetary Fund, and we are doing this in consultation with the European Central Bank.” Now, a casual reading of this [...]

Mr Justice John Cooke has saved NAMA’s bacon by allowing those acting on behalf of Liam Carroll to move forward with their petition to appoint a second examiner to the Zoe group of companies owned by the developer. The reasoning will be issued on Monday but it doesn’t look like it will be anything near [...]

Via. I can’t really comment as I couldn’t improve this contribution. Feel free to wade in below. A yellow and red card system should be used in the debate on the forthcoming referendum on the Lisbon Treaty, Brigid Laffan, the principal of the college of human sciences in UCD, said at the Merriman summer school [...]

This is very interesting, last time out we had Libertas as the great private sector campaign with money at its disposal – now it looks like the Yes side will be the ones rolling in private dosh as Intel Chief Exec in Ireland Jim O’Hara signalled the intent of big business here to get behind [...]

With the blurb coming from the “yes-camp” and the very regretful stepping back by Declan Ganley (at least he kept his promise) one might think that it is the Irish “No to Lisbon” campaigners against the EU. Fortunately that isn’t true. In the run-up to the recent EU elections I got talking on Twitter with [...]

Jason O Mahony » Blog Archive » The Improved Spoofer’s Guide to the Lisbon Treaty. Hurrah! A revised spoofers guide to Lisbon for the second referendum from Jason O Mahony. Nuggest sized pieces of Euro info.

The FOI that was released to Ken Foxe and led to the litany of stories about John O Donoghue’s travels around the world on the taxpayers tab was released to Gavin recently and he has begun posting the documents on his blog. Be sure to have a read.

What’s Colm McCarthy up to? Trying to rehabilitate the Oireachtas? Make us believe that our political class have something relevant to contribute? Mc Carthy is right: there should be an investigation into how our banks got into the pickle they’re in. He’s also right that there needs to be a much greater public understanding of [...]