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

Regular readers will recall my attempt to persuade RTÉ to make video of the Prime Time leaders’ debates available online without restriction so that it could be shared and reused on sites like this without fear of copyright infringement. Alas and alack, RTÉ said no; but, wonder of wonders, Fianna Fáil said yes! The full [...]

In answer to my requests (blogged on this site here, here and here; and elsewhere) that the forthcoming leaders debates on RTÉ be made available online without restriction so that the footage could be shared and re-used without infringing copyright - unsurprisingly and unfortunately - RTÉ have declined to do so:
Further to your request that [...]

A few posts ago on this blog, Paige wrote:
Perhaps the thing that I find most annoying about politics in Ireland is our national tendancy to import every half-baked idea from abroad and assume that it has equal validity in our little parish.
Oops. Before I’d read Paige’s post, I’d just put a post on my blog [...]

The storm clouds gathering around the Taoiseach threaten to blow away not only the government but also his party’s election campaign. For those who see politiics as a contact spectator sport, it is a fascinating story, not merely for the substance of the accumulating revalations, but also for the manner in which the story has [...]

As I was having a look this evening at the various manifestos on the political parties’ websites, I wondered what each of them might have to say about defamation, privacy, and political funding, and I have set out the fruits of this musing over on Cearta.

Over at cearta, I have posted the following footnote to Election 2007:
Now that An Taoiseach (the Prime Minister) has put us out of our misery and finally called the long-awaited general election, all Bills currently pending will fall with the outgoing Dáil (Lower House). Of those of particular interest to this blog, this means that [...]

Daithí on Lex Ferenda writes:
Irish bloggers, please spread the word. We may as well make the most of a daft Thursday election.
If you are unlikely to be able to vote in person on Thursday 24th May (and you are already registered to vote), it is not too late to apply for a postal vote. [...]

Yes, we all know that politicians regard their election promises as little more than discardable suggestions, so I don’t mean those promises. No, I mean I promise I made about the election. Early last month, Daithí called on
interested parties (interested being those (bloggers or not) with an interest in the legal and policy elements of [...]

Not auction politics. Poker politics. See Pat Rabbitte’s 18%, and raise it 38%.

Q: What do these two things have in common?
A: They’re both in the news today for the same reason.
Two short quotes. The first one is from the list of motions for the Progressive Democrats‘ national conference today:

In his great poem ‘Sunday Morning‘, Louis MacNeice describes Sunday morning as ‘Fate’s great bazaar’. And tomorrow morning, Fate’s great bazaar will bring us political blogging on the television (which is marginally less silly than Irish dancing - or for that matter, blogging - on the radio). Sunday morning, 9am, is an unholy hour to [...]

Daithí (with a hat tip to Lessig) has come up with an excellent idea for this election year, and for our next government:
We know that a lot of interesting IP and IT law and policy issues … will make their way into new Cabinet workplans.
This week, I’m calling on interested parties (interested being those (bloggers [...]