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

Just announced.  Laois-Offaly was 3FF, 2 FG in 2007.  Could FF be looking at 1 now? (Maybe not — see below).   Hopefully that little issue of the caretaker Taoiseach not being a TD is sorted out by now, presumably on the grounds that he was a TD when he was given the status.   Anyway, [...]

Micheal Martin’s new front bench contains some similar faces, some interesting backbenchers and a few faces that only political anoraks will be familiar with – e.g. Cllr Mary Fitzpatrick (Bertie’s bete noir) and Averil Power. As widely speculated, Mary Hanafin gets the nod as Deputy Leader and we can expect more of the same following [...]

According to the Irish Times, Labour is rowing back on its commitment to a 15bn euro adjustment by 2015. Eamon Gilmore wants the balance of the 15bn – which is 9bn after Budget 2011 – reduced by 2bn and the date for achieving the 3% deficit balance moved out to 2016. This change in Labour’s [...]

Much is made of the under-representation of women in the Dail and many people have been calling for gender quotas to be brought in. However little consideration is given to what the imposition of quotas mean. What signal do they send out.So first lets look at the claim that women are under-represented in the Dail. [...]

Following @shaymcdaid on twitter from the slection conference in Donegal NE where Neil Blaney has given a speech declaring he is bowing out of the race meaning right now Fianna Fail are to run a single candidate, Charlie McConalogue. HQ will decide on a 2nd tomorrow. As pointed out by @faduda this is the first [...]

The reason Enda is keen on a five-way debate was put on show on today’s This Week programe on RTE radio. Gerry Adams was interviewed at length and in detail by Colm O Mongain, despite the Sinn Fein griping afterwards, there was nothing unexpected in O Mongain’s questioning and the baron once again failed to [...]

As the dissolution of the Dail nears, many leaders took the opportunity today to outline their focus for the campaign ahead. While the debate issue has put Enda Kenny on the backfoot at a national level, within the party today he spoke to all of Fine Gael’s #GE11 candidates and delivered a speech outlining the [...]

The first of a number of Labour policy announcements took place today on Jobs and Innovation. The full document is available here. The Executive Summary is below the fold. The exploitation of our natural resources – strong agri-business, plenty of raw material for tourism and a desire to appeal beyond our markets make a lot [...]

Although we’re still in the phoney war stage of the election campaign, it seems that the basic FF strategy is to throw a bunch of, er, stuff, at the wall and see what sticks.  In that regard, we got today in the Senate an interesting and tendentious exchange between Sen. Alex White (Lab.) and Minister [...]

Was there any point to Fine Gael’s meeting with EU Commission President Barroso or was it, as Labour Leader Eamon Gilmore dubbed it, just a publicity stunt? Fine Gael went into the meeting waxing lyrical about renegotiating the interest rates on the IMF/EU package and came out of it accepting that Ireland would have to [...]

Tactically, I think Enda Kenny made an error by giving Michael Martin’s idea news-cycle legs by opposing it. I understand why he might wish to but I think that turning a non-issue into the kind of 3-4 day story that media prefer to cover over policy is a big misjudgement. The lastest talking point from [...]

Watching the coverage of Micheal Martin’s ascent to the helm of Fianna Fail today, one is struck by a couple of points worth noting. The first is that there is an emerging consensus in political commentary that Martin is due a bounce on the current poll ratings and that this will help him to secure [...]

There is understandable amusement at the constitutional contortions involved in Gerry Adams resignation from the UK House of Commons so that he can concentrate on his candidacy for Louth in the 2011 general election.  But before presuming that there is something uniquely republican about the problems created by the resignation procedure, consider the list of [...]

It’s too soon to say that we are in the home stretch of our political drama.  Brian Lenihan, wearing his Minister of Finance hat – “If you want to ensure that some person doesn’t pay tax, someone else has to pay tax. That’s now how we’re going to operate as a State. So as a [...]

Who among us has forgotten the tearful scene at the end of Terminator 2 when everyone still standing realizes that although that awful T-1000 Terminator is dead, the good Terminator (Arnie) points out that he is technology from the future and therefore must destroy himself to leave no trace?  So he lowers himself into the [...]