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

Let me begin by apologising if the headline of this piece has conjured up any disturbing images in your mind’s eye. This little article makes no allegations about Pat Rabbitte and Michael McDowell engaging in homosexual relations. (Not that there’d be anything wrong with that, my heterosexual guilt prompts me to add.) So why the [...]

Originally posted at Plain of Pillars
The killing of John Ward has dominated conversation in Mayo for sometime. Yesterday, Padraig Nally, the confessed killer of John “Frog” Murphy walked free from court, having been acquitted of manslaughter.
At first glance, the verdict seems repugnant. Pavee Point has already decided that the verdict reflects the prejudiced nature of [...]

It is incomprehensible that when Gardai are cracking down on drug barons, pills five times stronger than ecstasy can be bought over the counter in Ireland by anyone over the age of 18
So begins the Irish Examiner editorial on the legal availability of “mind altering drugs” in Ireland. It is, of course, old news. The [...]

Last week, in the run up to the Blogging the Election conference, Ryan Tubridy interviewed Cian of Where’s me Country and Mick of Slugger O’Toole on his show. They say that there’s no such thing as bad publicity, but I’m not sure that the piece will help the cause of Irish blogging.
The interview was a [...]

So call me crazy, but I fail to see what the media frenzy is all about. Bertie got money off some business types. So what?
Don’t get me wrong. I don’t think that our politicians should be taking cash from business, for any reason. It creates a conflict of interest. But what’s so special about Bertie [...]

So it seems that all of our politicians are in favour of Prison Reform(TM), and they’ve all got ideas on what needs to be done. McDowell has his plans for super-prisons. The Greens are criticising him. Fine Gael are, as usual, calling for tougher sentences and 24 hour policing. Fianna Fail are just happy that [...]

So the brother was out on Saturday night, came home around half four and woke me up. Turned out, there was some severely drunken wheelchair bound chap out in the middle of the road beside the flat where we live. The brother decided to go down and help the fellow out.

There are now four essential ingredients to a professionally managed political campaign: political polls, data processing, imagery and money. The polls discover what the voter already believes, and data processing interprets and analyses the depth of voters’ attitudes. After that, an image of the candidate is tailored to meet the voters’ demands and desires, and [...]

The census of 1996 revealed that 41% of the Irish population are aged under 25. This fact should make “young people” the single most powerful voting bloc in the country. This is not the case.A survey by the National Youth Council found that in recent years, voter participation among young people was just 38%. The [...]

Come the election, a nice chap called Eamon Scanlon will probably get my first preference vote. Eamon isn’t exactly the most charismatic of men and he certainly doesn’t receive a great deal of coverage in the national press. Yet, he has a very good chance of taking a seat in the Sligo-Leitrim North constituency.
The reason [...]

Why the Greens will never be a major player in Irish politics
In a manner of speaking, I’m a supporter of the Green Party. I think that the more power they have, the better off we’ll be. The Green Party’s problem though, is that I, and many like me, will never vote for them.
I live in [...]