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

Red C poll capturing post-budget reaction for Sunday Business Post with previous poll (22nd Nov) in parentheses: FF 27% (23%), FG 34%(36%), Lab 17%(17%), SF 8%(10%), Green 5% (5%), Ind. 9% (9%). These results are not easy to interpret.

In a move that suggests a news dump (Friday afternoon, anyone with an eye on news waiting for events in Stormont), the Minister for Finance has named the expert who will write one of the pre-reports into the banking system inquiry.  He is Klaus Regling and his track record seems to feature the kind of [...]

Water charges for domestic users were abolished with effect from 1 January 1997, six months before a general election that swept the Rainbow Coalition aside and ushered in the Bertie era of boom and bust. Now, they’re back on the political agenda, courtesy of the Greens, the renewed Programme for Government, and a variety of others, state [...]

I’ve had cause to do a lot of reading recently.  For reasons that are partially related to work, and partially related to some ideas I’ve been tossing around with friends, I’ve spent some time reading about progressive movements in the UK.  The possibility of a hung parliament seems to have created an atmosphere in which [...]

The Irish Times has an interesting two part series on the predicament of the Irish unions.  Today’s installment provides a good insight into the minds of the union leadership and in so doing illustrates the challenge of relevance.  David Begg and Jack O’Connor now say that after 20 years of Social Partnership™, all they ever [...]

The headline: “Buying imported food a traitorous act, guide claims” to which the story doesn’t really add anything. This is just a representative manifestation of the Buy Irish, shop local, self-sufficiency good, imports bad sort of protectionist nonsense – like the outcry over Christmas shopping in Newry – that sends my blood pressure through the [...]

Via @neilward Ff22+2. Fg32+1. Lab24-1. Gr3-1. Sf8-1 Cowen26+3. Kenny31-1. Gilm46+1. Gorm24+2. Adms31+3. The only statistically significant move: Gov app.19+5 Everything else is very very stable.

Get ready for the 1st word above to spring from Brian Cowen’s mouth in the Dail any day now. Or perhaps not.  Anyway, the context is that Ireland’s “light touch” regulation during the boom years resulted in a free-for-all not just for our friendly local banks but also for Dublin-based operations of foreign banks who [...]

After establishing himself as the one minister making actual decisions during the recent cold spell, Batt O’Keeffe has struck again today with an abrupt decision to abolish the National University of Ireland.  As anyone with a degree from UCD, UCG, UCC, and Maynooth knows, NUI is the body that actually awards the degree, and also [...]

A multi-phase inquiry into the cause of our financial crisis has been outlined to the Dail by the Minister for Finance, Brian Lenihan, on behalf of the Government. The first phase will comprise an investigation by the Governor of the Central Bank, Patrick Honohan, into the role of the Central Bank and the regulatory system [...]

You will (or should be) aware of the ongoing dispute with the Jarveys at Killarney National Park over the dung-catchers that they are refusing to attach to their horses. The Dept of Environment are taking to the web to outline just how safe these nappies are. Including a video on youtube outlining the safety and [...]

Since the autumn of last year, momentum has been steadily gathering for an inquiry into why our banks collapsed. The call for an inquiry was first made by economist Colm McCarthy, who initially envisaged a parliamentary forum along the lines of the PAC inquiry into DIRT payments some years ago. Since then McCarthy has expanded [...]

This post stems from a discussion in the comments section under ‘All politics is local‘. We were comparing and contrasting the UK and Irish systems in terms of how rooted politicians must be within their local constituencies. I think there is significant difference between the two jurisdictions, to some degree due to FPTP (First Past [...]

Via. Mr Dempsey said it was never a bad decision to go on holiday and he did not accept people needed to “see and hear” from him when the conditions were most severe. “Ministers for Transport don’t actually go out and grit the roads,” he said. They sure don’t but their quango subordinates have quite [...]

The cold weather, in addition to matching the economic mood, as highlighted some structural issues in Irish local government — issues that have slipped down the agenda with all the focus on the budget and NAMA.  A few things worth mentioning.  The frequent word in government statements about the weather is “local” as in local [...]