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

Word from the count centre is that Catherine Byrne (FG) is going to be elected without reaching quota on the final count, which means that Aongus O’Snodaigh (SF) will shade it ahead of Eric Byrne (Lab), with just 67 votes between them.
Right now papers are being re-checked to make sure that none of Eric’s votes [...]

Seriously, where has Bertie been all day?Pat Rabbitte has been on RTÉ the whole time, Enda’s popped up to celebrate every couple of hours, McDowell was very quiet but well, that was for a good reason, and since he got elected Sargent has been on all the time too.
What’s the story?
Edit by Cian: Presidential entry [...]

Cyprian Brady: 939
Mary Fitzpatrick: 1,725
Bertie: Over 12,000
Unbelievable stuff

Earlier today Damien noted that there were strong rumours that Fianna Fáil campaigners had been telling people in Dublin that the Green Party were in favour of abortion and would legalise it if they got into government.
It’s sounds slightly far-fetched that a party would spread such clear lies about another party. It’s not.
A canvasser for [...]

Qu’est-ce que c’est? This picture of Michael D on a bus shelter in France went up on the Labour Flickr page a short while ago

Quel enthusiasm…
Update: Labour aren’t sure how it got there either.

Michael McDowell today predicted that, contrary to pretty much everything that’s been written in the entire election campaign, the PD’s are actually on course to gain 2 seats, bringing them up to 10 seats overall.
Now think about that. Paddy Power are currently offering evens that the PD’s will keep between 1 and 3 seats. None [...]

Adore him or abhor him, when McDowell’s on form he’s always entertaining. In tonight’s debate, he was the lynchpin; he was a foil to the earnestness of Sargent, a bully who refused to let Adams away with attempts to avoid discussing paramilitarism and a constant antagonist to Rabbitte.
More than anyone (Mark Little included) he [...]

Pat Rabbitte was just on the tail-end of the 9 o’clock news,  saying that he doesn’t know whether it’s going to be a ‘fiery’ debate or not, but that most people ‘have already made up their minds who they’re going to vote for’ so it’s not the most important debate ever.
Er, wtf? Last time I [...]

Pat Rabbitte will be answering questions live on ireland.com tomorrow between 1.30pm and about 3pm. If anyone’s interested in submitting questions then click here (you can submit them until 2.30pm tomorrow).

From breakingnews.ie comes the news that Liz O’Donnell has said the PD’s are willing to form an alternative coalition if they don’t get enough seats with FF to form a government; but not with Labour. Nope, anyone but Labour.
Deputy O’Donnell added: “Our preference would be to continue in government with Fianna Fáil but if [...]

There’s a hell of a lot of rumour and hearsay going around right now about the PDs, but a few things at least are clear: ireland.com is reporting that the PDs have gotten new information about Bertie’s financial dealings - there’s a claim on politics.ie that Jody Corcoran showed McDowell this information last night - [...]

Within an hour of today’s Irish Times going up on the web, Fianna Fáil had put out a statement slamming one of its lead stories on the continuing controversies over payments to Bertie Ahern. In a ever-so-slightly conspiracy theorist tone, FF allege that the story is part of “a carefully orchestrated campaign to cause mayhem [...]

Seriously, whatever about their worthiness, intellect or ability, if you were to ask every Labour candidate what the single most interesting fact about them is, what would they say? In the spirit of scientific endeavour and uh, procrastinating writing an essay, here’s what the Dublin candidates had to say, courtesy of the very lovely mycandidate.ie [...]

There was a feature on News 2 tonight about Rock the Vote, who launched their first tv ads this evening. The main ad is here, and it’s good; gets the message across and not nearly as cringey as you’d imagine.

Labour have just launched their latest campaign video, “This is Bernard” , as part of their campaign for safe and secure communities. And I don’t like it.