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

Seven days from now the fate of the Irish nation will have been determined. This generation will determine whether the independence won because of the sacrifice of the men and women of 1916 will have been but an interlude in Irish history, or whether 1916’s vision of a small nation, cooperating with its European and [...]

Latest poll from TNS-MRBI in today’s Irish Times. The poll was conducted with a representative sample of 1,000 voters in face-to-face interviews at 100 sampling points in all 43 constituencies. The margin of error is plus or minus 3 per cent. Highlights: Breakdown of support by party/class/gender/age/region: Yes/No FF: 74-16 FG: 57-31 Labour: 46-34 Green: [...]

Update: Official Press Release here. – In a decision sure to spark furious condemnation from “no” campaigners, the Broadcasting Commission of Ireland has announced new regulations on airtime set to grant the political-parties the vast majority of airtime during the campaign. Broadcasters are not required to allocate exactly the same amount of time to both [...]

One of few journalists to call CU for Dana in 1999 has called the third seat in the Northwest euro constituency for Libertas leader Declan Ganley: Ten years ago this week, I was the only reporter to ‘call’ it for Independent candidate Dana Rosemary Scallon in advance of the Connacht-Ulster European election. Fianna Fáil and [...]

Alarmingly for those of us who value Western freedoms including freedom of speech, the Minister for Justice, Dermot Ahern, has revealed his intention to make “blasphemous libel” a crime, punishable by a fine of €100,000. From the Irish Times:

Peruse the diagram above. The green/yellow states are those voting with DREs with a voter-verified paper-trail (VVPR) (except in Tennessee, Colorado and Maryland where the relevant legislation has been passed but doesn’t come into force this year) and with/without (respectively) a paper audit-trail. The red-states are those requiring neither a paper-audit-trail nor a voter verified [...]

In a week dominated by harrowing scenes of civilian suffering in the ongoing Russian-Georgian conflict over the separatist region of South Ossetia. There are shades of the Sudetenland crisis in 1938, when Hitler, on the pretext of defending a ‘persecuted’ German minority in that region of Czechoslovakia, was appeased and allowed to annex it, followed [...]

Even before the Irish people’s democratic decision to reject the fatally-flawed Lisbon Treaty, (which would have deepened the democratic-deficit in Europe still further), the source of Libertas funding was a bane of “yes” campaigners. To the elite, the possibility of the ‘mainstream’ parties being so decisively outspent by this upstart pro-business group with financial interests [...]

The news that the ESB is to seek a 20pc price hike will if granted, drive the average annual bill up to a staggering €1,100. It is up to the Commission for Energy Regulation to sanction all such rises. Before it does so, it had better think hard about the hardship they could bring and [...]

The Dublin LGBTQ Pride Festival is well underway, and continued yesterday evening with the annual debate in the Walton Theatre in TCD at 7.30pm. The motion for discussion was : “Same-Sex Couples Want Access to Civil Marriage, not Civil Partnerships”Chair: Sen. Ivana BacikProp: Sen. David Norris & Ailbhe Smyth (MarriagEquality)Opp: Neil Ward (Dublin Pride) & [...]

In a great day for Irish and European democracy, the Irish people, on a higher turnout than Nice II, rejected the illegitimate and anti-democratic Lisbon Treaty by 53.4% to 46.6%. In doing so, they have struck a blow for freedom and against remote, unaccountable and undemocratic rule by unelected bureaucrats in Brussels. They have shown [...]

Wednesday’s Irish Independent is a case-in-point for those of us who suspect the press of siding with the Establishment against the people over Lisbon. With jobs losses growing by the week, they cynically attempt to link the issue to the possibility of a “No” vote to the June 12th referendum. This article is pure facile [...]