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Liveblog of Dublin City Council monthly meeting
Edit: For some reason the liveblog is refusing to embed into the site so if you want to follow it, it’s here: http://www.scribblelive.com/Event/Dublin_City_Council_meeting_July_4th
Enda Kenny announces surprising list of nominees to the Seanad
Taoiseach Enda Kenny has tonight announced his eleven nominations to Seanad Eireann. There’s some welcome additions, some of which point to the obvious influence of Labour (Katherine Zappone, Aideen Hayden, for example, or the fact that 7 out of the 11 nominees are women). There’s also some surprises: Fiach MacConghail gets the nod for his [...]
Liveblog of the opening day of the 31st Dail
Follow our liveblog on the #31Dail – you can watch proceedings in the sidebar from after 12.00
A few headlines at 10.30pm
61 TDs elected so far. Fine Gael 27, Labour 17, SF 5, FF 4, Socialist 2, Independents 6. Huge losses for FF. Some high-profile and slightly gasp-provoking casualties, in no particular order: Mary Coughlan, John Gormley, Trevor Sargent, Mary O’Rourke, Sean Haughey, Conor Lenihan, Barry Andrews, Dick Roche, Pat Carey, Martin Mansergh. Still over one [...]
Drama in Dún Laoghaire
It’s a total nail-biter in Dún Laoghaire as Ivana Bacik and Richard Boyd-Barrett battle it out for the last seat with less than 200 votes between them. Bacik is currently on 6,953 and RBB is on 7132. Incredibly close. Barry Andrews has been eliminated and his votes are being distributed so now it’s interesting to [...]
Going to be a lot of ex-Ministers looking for new jobs after today
One of the most staggering things about the FF collapse – and there’s been so much to choose from – has been just how many of their senior party figures have been affected. This isn’t just a cull of the backbenchers – the entire FF front bench is being decimated. Vincent Browne just said he [...]
Shane Ross and his incredible vote-getting machine
Shane Ross just got elected on the first count in Dublin South with over 17,000 votes – quota was 12,108. That’s Willie O’Dea levels of vote-getting right there. Interesting to see where the surplus goes – FG will likely be the biggest beneficiaries but which of their three candidates?
Varadkar pretty much rules out the idea of going in with Independents
Not hugely surprising considering it looks like FG are going to be quite a few seats away from an overall majority, but speaking on RTE Radio One just now, Leo Varadkar essentially ruled out the idea of FG going in to government with independent TDs. “The new government has to be a strong government, has [...]
Joan Burton becomes first TD elected to the new Dáil
Joan Burton has become the first TD to be elected to 31st Dáil after topping the poll in Dublin West. Burton was elected on the first count with 9,627 votes, giving her a surplus of 1,132 votes which will now be distributed. Turnout in Dublin West was extraordinarily high at 82.3%, an increase of over [...]
On the importance of vote management – a case study of FG and Labour
Fine Gael look like they’re going to achieve something fairly remarkable in Dublin South: Their just over 36% of the vote has split almost exactly between their three candidates and right now, it looks like all three are probably going to get elected. Latest tallies have Olivia Mitchell at 14%, Alan Matthews at 12% and [...]
Dublin North-West to swing from 2 FF to No FF
For a sign of just how bad things are for Fianna Fáil in Dublin, look at Dublin North-West. Fianna Fáil got their biggest Dublin vote in the 2007 general election there with almost 50% of the vote. This time around, the FF vote has fallen to less than 12%, with outgoing TD Pat Carey on 11.79% [...]
Hanafin and Andrews probably gone in Dún Laoghaire (and Cuffe too).
After all of the internal FF party drama over whether it was a mistake to run two candidates in Dún Laoghaire, it’s looking like the answer to that is: Yes. It was. RTE’s latest tweet from DL says that FF are privately conceding that they’ve lost both of their seats in the constituency. Latest tally has [...]
Leaders’ debate tonight – the reaction
Our panel of bloggers and tweeters – David Cochrane, Cian O’Flaherty, Christine Bohan, Suzy Byrne and Alexia Golez – give their reaction to tonight’s debate between all five leaders:
14 days to go – Lenihan vs Noonan (again). Plus, the worst tweet you’ll see this campaign. Promise.
Shorter post than usual – events in Cork meant that the election campaign took a back seat today. Are the spats between Michael Noonan and Brian Lenihan getting more frequent? Or is it just that there’s little else to divert attention from the holy troika of photo ops, policy launches and media appearances that are [...]
15 days to go: Independents Day
Did anyone guess just how big the numbers today would be? Today was the close of nominations for anyone wishing to stand in the election and on another day, the story would have been how FF running are running a skeleton number of candidates – just 76, down from 106 in 2007, and not even [...]
