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

The Profligate Populism of the PDs The PDs have signalled that they will put tax cuts as the centre piece of their election manifesto. Placing themselves clearly out of step with their senior partner in government, the PDs have in effect signalled that they are putting policy and votes ahead of the pursuit of [...]

There’s a typical, speculative piece of horse race type punditry in this morning’s Examiner. The article has a certain undertone of weary cynicism as Shaun Connolly, the paper’s political correspondent, takes us through the usual coalition scenarios that might happen after the next election. Connolly says that the whispered phrase that echoes through [...]

In last week’s Village Vincent Browne argued that Pat Rabbitte has disappointed expectations of him as leader and has moved the party decisively to the right, brought now new dynamism to the party and failed to provide a “Rabbitte-jump” in its electoral fortunes.

Following on from the questions I raised at the end of yesterday’s post, there was a very useful op-ed in yesterday’s Irish Times by Séamus Ó Cinnéide, Jean Monet Professor of Social Policy at NUI Maynooth.  It raises some very pertinent questions on the relationship between partnership and democratic accountability.  The view that partnership vitiates [...]

It seems that it’s an undisputed truth of electoral strategy that promising to raise taxes is tantamount to electoral suicide. Hence Labour and the Greens making clear pledges against any increases in taxation at their respective conferences over the last couple of weekends. The latter’s stance was praised by one commentator as a [...]