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

Sources are claiming that Tommy Broughan’s statement on the Labour leadership race is on the way “shortly”.
Broughan has been expected to make his position clear today but so far things have been exceptionally quiet. It looks as though his statement will come after 5PM which should give him the top-spot on RTÉ’s 6.1 News, especially [...]

Ireland.com is now saying that “senior sources” have confirmed Rabbitte’s resignation is the reason for this afternoon’s Labour press conference.
Rabbitte has been hobbling since his party’s poor showing at the elections earlier this year where Labour lost one seat rather than make the large gains many had hoped for.
When the poor performance became clear many [...]

The Taoiseach’s 11 nominees are as follows:
Dan Boyle & Deirdre de Burca (Green Party)
Ciaran Cannon & Fiona O’Malley (Progressive Democrats)
Martin Brady, Ivor Callely, Maria Corrigan, John Ellis, Lisa McDonald & Brian Ó Domhnaill (Fianna Fáil)
Eoghan Harris (Sunday Independent columnist and Bertieaholic)
Link 

According to tomorrow’s Sunday Business Post, Environment Minister John Gormley will soon present a memo to Cabinet with a view to reforming the election process for Senators.
The article doesn’t give too much detail on his plans, but the crux of his proposal is the suggestion to make the majority of Senators directly elected by the [...]

In what can only be described as a surprising move, Tom Parlon has decided to leave the Progressive Democrats and take up a post in the Construction Industry Federation instead.
Until now, Parlon was expected to take one of the two PD Seanad nominations (along with Fiona O’Malley), but more importantly had already been marked as [...]

When Bertie Ahern made overtures to the effect that Beverly Flynn could be in line for a junior ministry position, some on this site pointed out how unfair many of the less infamous FF back-benchers might find the whole situation.
Now it looks like Fianna Fáil’s own man in Mayo, Dara Callarey, is trying to pour [...]

Following on from Cían’s post about additional minister of state positions, Bertie Ahern has confirmed that Trevor Sargent will be one of the twenty put forward in the coming days.
Sargent said he wouldn’t take a full ministry after he announced his resignation as Green Party leader - he said he would, however, take a junior [...]

According to Bertie Ahern, anyway. He also says she should expect to hold ministerial office during the lifetime of the new Dáil - is that before or after she’s declared bankrupt?*
He also says that he considers Brian Cowen to be his natural successor, in case that wasn’t already apparent.
*For legal reasons I should point out [...]

So Dick Roche decided to give the go-ahead on the M3 on Tuesday, around the time it became clear that a Fianna Fáil/Green coalition was going to happen. The decision didn’t need cabinet approval and the Department of the Environment decided not to issue a press release on the matter.  According to the department that [...]

So FF-Green have done a deal - now the guessing game before the full statement:

Does it include the PDs (and co-location)?
What ministerial positions will the Greens get?
Will Sargent stick to his guns and step down as leader, having guided the party to Government?
With or without Sargent, it’s likely to be another all-Dublin Taoiseach/Tánaiste team, what [...]

RTÉ News at One is saying that a final agreement has not yet been reached and that Dan Boyle did not tell journalists that a programme for government had been agreed, as has been reported already.
It looks like we’re close to it, however, with Boyle and Noel Dempsey putting the final touches to the agreement [...]

One of the main victims of the “squeeze” on smaller parties in this year’s General Election was undoubtedly Sinn Féin who ended up losing a seat rather than making gains as predicted.
So what went wrong for the party?

(just a quick observation on the emerging result which can probably be filed under the “state the obvious” category)
This election’s campaign was laden with criticism from many who felt that there was no choice for voters. On issues like income tax, stamp duty, hospital beds and Gardaí numbers this was largely true but it is [...]

RTÉ seems overly keen on putting public money into the pocket of “pollster” Frank Luntz despite his abysmal performance on Week In Politics’ ‘Frank Opinion’ programme.
Luntz has been on RTÉ One and RTÉ Radio 1 over the course of the last 24 hours and has displayed an amazing lack of neutrality and intelligence in his comments, [...]

Earlier today I managed to speak with junior minister and (re-elected) TD for Dublin South West Conor Lenihan.

We spoke about the Fianna Fail performance in his constituency, the shock result of a Sinn Fein loss to Fine Gael and the performance of his party as a whole.

I’ve just spoken to Olivia Mitchell of Fine Gael who reflected on the campaign as we face the final few hours of polling.
The interview is available below in mp3 format.

Previous: Simon Coveney, Fergus O’Dowd, Eamonn Ryan, Eric Byrne, Ciaran Cuffe, Ruairi Quinn