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

Via @neilward Tomorrow’s Irish Independent / Millward Brown Lansdowne opinion poll. (Figures compared to last February) FF 27% +2%; FG 34% +4%; Lab 19% -3%; Green 2% -3%; SF 8% +1%; Ind 10% Same. Leaders: Cowen 22% +1%; Kenny 26% -3%; Gilmore 54% +2%; Gormley 25% -3%; Adams 37% Same. – Govt Sat 13% +3%; [...]

One of the thorniest problems arising from Ireland’s eurozone membership during this downturn has been the absence of any mechanism to devalue our currency and thus help restore economic competitiveness. That is, apart from the unpopular and painful option of reducing wage and price levels throughout the economy. But if we took a different approach [...]

Statement from the Department of Finance this afternoon announcing the assistant to Klaus Regling, who will co-author his scoping report on the collapse of the Irish banking system. Contrary to expectations, it’s not a local appointee.

It must have seemed like perfect timing for the Greens when Bertie Ahern came calling to their door after the 2007 election; a once in a lifetime political opportunity. True, the Greens hadn’t done as well as they might have hoped in the election itself; but their environmental agenda was popular especially among younger voters. [...]

RTE headline: Gardaí vote to take industrial action. Which sounds ominous. Except that when you read on, (1) only half of the eligible pool botherered to vote at all, (2) of those who did, the majority voted for work-to-rule type measures, and (3), “the [Garda Representative] Association will decide at its annual conference in April [...]

The Taoiseach’s department has released the text of the Cabinet statement in support of John Gormley which was distributed to the pol corrs last night.  Full text below the fold.  One thing to note – The Government has already decided to impose a levy on incineration. The legislation to allow for this is being drafted [...]

The Dept of Finance tonight released new expense schedules for the Houses of the Oireachtas. They are taken from the Houses of the Oireachtas Commission proposals to the Minister for Finance. Details of the new regime from the appendix below the fold:

A day after George Lee’s departure, we can see a situation that would have warranted another George politician to say “Heckuva job”.  Lee’s departure obscured the implosion of the year-long government talking point that NAMA would increase bank lending: the IMF had told them, quite sensibly, that it wouldn’t.  According to Enda’s statement yesterday, Lee [...]

Gordon Brown statement to House of Commons on Hillsborough Agreement – None of this could have been achieved without working closely with the Irish government – and I pay tribute to Brian Cowen, the Irish Foreign Minister, Micheal Martin and to the Taoiseach’s predecessors Bertie Ahern and Albert Reynolds. Who’s missing from that list of [...]

So Boy George has bit the bullet. Fallen on his own sword, hoist by his own petard, crashed and burned, came a cropper. At 1pm today former RTE economist and more recently celebrity by-election candidate, George Lee, announced he is resiging his Dáil seat and his membership of the Fine Gael party. It wasn’t happening [...]

Last years ‘Obama’ moment is this years….well have a listen over at Maman Poulet and make of it what you can.

Finally reality and honesty are replacing delusion and denial in the debate about the Irish language. The most noticeable and welcome change is that the theories of linguistics, particularly those relating to endangered languages, or indeed the death of languages, are being used to give the debate a more scientific and realistic grounding. It was [...]

The Department of Finance has published the January exchequer returns.  The main focus of course is on the revenue side.  It’s not easy to figure out where the January returns are relative to expectations since they don’t tell us “the profile” for January.   On the face of it, what’s worrying is the big percentage declines [...]