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

Enda Kenny wanted to show leadership today, so at his party’s pre-budget announcement he let it be known he has asked the Dail to cut his pay by 5% for next year. Bold. Decisive. Leading.
Only that on Wednesday he was speaking on that very topic on Today FM’s The Last Word. Paul Gogarty suggested that [...]

PD local councillor Cait Keane has joined Fine Gael in Dublin South. There is by-election coming up and with Tom Kitt steppign down in 2012 Fine Gael might lick their chops at a potentail third seat.

As per last night’s post, the full details are below. The clear responsibility for the prolonged downturn the ESRI expect is the bad state of government finances. They don’t have the capacity or room for manouvere to use the budget counter-cyclically and ramp up government investment in economic activity.
- We now expect GNP to contract [...]

Anyone know why the ESRI shifted their embargo on the Quarterly Summary to 09.30 tomorrow? Conspiracy theorists would have a field day with the possibilities but it seems odd to deny the Irish Times their splash headline tomorrow.
News is bad by the way, contraction wll break 1% of GNP this year.

Thanks to everyone who came on Saturday and those who watched the live stream online. Thanks to the guests for speaking - especially Zack for making the trip over to talk to us. I am currently working on getting the video uploaded. Tom Duke did a fantastic job of streaming and grabbing the video. If [...]

Via redmum

Good day for a news dump…
The Minister for Health Mary Harney has said that major cutbacks are underway to prevent cost over-runs in the Health Service Executive.
The minister was responding to questions in the Dáil about the HSE’s budget over-run which was expected to exceed €300m by the end of this year.
Minister Harney said a [...]

In a statment released this morning, the Government signalled that it will “safeguard the Irish Banking system”. The world fell apart yesterday and surely some of our most famous banks are hanging on by a thread. Their stock pummelled and - in private at least - their reputation is now in tatters, they need security [...]

The world is falling in.

Cathal Coleman out at my alma mater emailed the details of his adult education course on Democracy this morning. The course is called The Worst Form of Government: Democracy from Plato to Marx and full details are in the pdf.

Joe Zefran is the editor of RTE online at RTE.ie - the online presence of the State broadcaster and he is going to be attending the Irish Social Media conference on October 4. He will be talking about the developments in the mass media here with regard to the internet and technological change. I met [...]

While some on Questions and Answers last night were talking of socialism for the rich, New York bourses plummeted again on uncertainty about the Hank Paulson bailout plan. The Dow ended down 3% again, ISEQ fell over 5% this morning and everyone is left scratching their heads. The problems lie in Donald Rumsfeld’s known unknowns.

ITs a good week for Red C to take the latest tracking poll for the Sunday Business Post. Markets are falling like stones (Friday has the potential to be another massive dead cat bounce) and the government don’t look to have stamped authority on many aspects of policy.

Bertie at the Tribunal - The Money Trail | Keith @ Granite Shavings
Keith has a great post tying together the threads of Bertie's evidence at the Mahon Tribunal

Reads very well for the deal to benefit private sector workers before public sector and address concerns over the lower paid. It might be a nightmare to get passed by ICTU though.
From
PRIVATE SECTOR PAY TERMS
It is agreed by the parties that the following basic pay terms shall apply in the Private Sector:
A Pay Pause [...]

Unfortunately I missed Questions and Answers last night, however today I was greeted by the nice news that I didn’t need to subject myself to the RTE media player when instead Simon and Suzy had liveblogged it using scribblelive.
It is a better, and briefer, programme for it. More of this will hopefully be available to [...]