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

The latest Sunday Business Post/Red C opinion poll shows Fianna Fáil support rock solid at 35%. Taoiseach Bertie Ahern has previously called this poll standing ‘acceptable enough’, and he seems confident that it provides a firm foundation for the party’s 2007 election campaign.
I was polled by Red C last week and, as well as confiding [...]

Well worth listening to on RTE Radio 1 was Andy O’Mahony in Dialogue with American sociology professor Richard Sennett today at 18.30.
UK Prime Minister Tony Blair gave Sennett’s last book, ‘Respect’, a sales boost when he launched his so-called respect agenda after the 2005 UK general election.

From today a new resource is added to the IrishElection.com sidebar.
The official results of the 2002 Dáil and Seanad elections and the 2004 European and local elections are now availablle for download in .pdf format.
General Election 2002
Seanad Elections 2002
Local Elections 2004 Volume 1
Local Elections 2004 Volume 2
European Elections 2004

Green Party leader Trevor Sargent last weekend described Fianna Fáil and the Progressive Democrats as a disgrace to the men and women of 1916 and the principles they fought for. The current Labour Party constituency newsletter reports that 15% of children in Ireland live in consistent poverty.
 
I believe the ideological divide in Irish politics is [...]

Coffee with Killian
Killian Forde (SF) Talks Globalisation with IrishElection.com
Frank — Killian, you’ve praised ‘the coming together of the broad left in Europe’ against the Services Directive, and you said the global left has been ‘ideologically drifting, defensive and struggling to articulate a credible alternative’. You expressed satisfaction with the defeat of right-wing MEPs over the [...]

University College Cork PhD Candidate and Griffith College law lecturer Fiona De Londras seems to have confused opinion with fact when she wrote recently in her first contribution to IrishElection.com that in Ireland ‘our taxes are high’.
It was a throwaway remark in a comment article supporting Justice Minister Michael McDowell for his robust views on [...]

Recent posts and comments on IrishElection.com have opened up the question of different models of public, private and hybrid systems of provision for healthcare. The issue seems capable of rational analysis to arrive at the most suitable solution for the time and place we are at in Ireland. I don’t believe that a purely [...]

Read yesterday’s introduction to Killian Forde
Frank:
Killian Forde, you’ve been on Dublin City Council since 2004. You put in twenty hours weekly as a public representative for the Donaghmede area where you live with your Kosovar wife Teuta, whom you met while working in the Balkans with the UN, and your son Enis. You work [...]

Exclusive By Frank Neary, for IrishElection.com
Flurries of March snow were whipping at the ears of Sinn Féin Councillor Killian Forde as he crossed Dublin’s Parnell Street to step through the sliding glass doorway into the warm and stylish foyer of the Jurys Inn where I was waiting to meet him for our 11.15 a.m. appointment. [...]

Flurries of March snow were whipping at the ears of Councillor Killian Forde as he crossed Dublin’s Parnell Street to step through the sliding glass doorway into the warm and stylish foyer of the Jurys Inn for our 11.15 a.m. appointment. A short elevator ride took us to the second floor lounge where we settled [...]

The alternative government composed of Fine Gael and Labour, and possibly the Greens, still doesn’t have a policy platform. It’s still in the sidings, you could say.
All credit to them though for timetabling. You couldn’t choose a better occasion to bury bad news than on a Tuesday in March when the Dáil is not sitting, [...]

Hats off to Dossing Times for picking up on Dun Laoighre Rathdown Green Party TD Ciarán Cuffe’s recent opportune blog sideswipe at his Leader’s putative coalition partners.
The cerebral Shankill architect, environmental campaigner, and sitting Dáil deputy was in Dublin city centre last Saturday when the street aggression started. ‘Not much fun being in town with [...]

Monday, February 20, 2006A ‘rambling’ speech by Green Party leader Trevor Sargent at a pre-Christmas drinks function has led to the departure of the party’s communications manager Steve Rawson after seven years service, the Irish Independent reported yesterday.
Harry McGee reported in the Irish Examiner last month that ‘Sargent made a speech at his party’s drinks [...]

David McSavage watch out! Arts Minister John O’Donoghue wants your job.
The Kerry minister was incandescent with wit when he took to the podium at this weekend’s Ógra Fianna Fáil conference in Ennis, County Clare. Many delegates were seen clutching their sides as laughter became uncontrollable.An excerpt
I’m always very reluctant to talk about philosophy because it [...]

It’s said that there are two sides in politics — the inside and the outside. Not true! Two Irish political dynasties currently have members who are half in and half out, Síle de Valera and Seán Haughey.
Síle’s grandfather Eamon de Valera, and Seán’s father Charlie Haughey and grandfather Seán Lemass were all Fianna Fáil Taoiseach [...]

In his 2004 political biography of Bertie Ahern, author and journalist John Downing described a meeting a few years ago of the Fianna Fáil parliamentary party. Downing reported that Taoiseach Bertie Ahern told his party’s Oireachtas members that he’d ‘fuck up’ any of them who ‘undermined’ him.
The Taoiseach is passionate about improving Ireland’s transport infrastructure [...]