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

A couple of semi-formed thoughts of issues that perhaps deserved a little more attention in all the relentless punditry.

Rediscovering his “mandate” mojo on Election Eve, Brian Lenihan has moved virtually all of Anglo’s deposits and NAMA bonds to AIB.  An impolite question: where exactly is AIB getting the €3.5 billion in cash that it’s paying for the NAMA bonds?  Yes, it just sold the Polish operation to Banco Santander but that cash was [...]

Today in Commercial Court – Mr Justice Peter Kelly was told today that the [M1] tolling company is claiming it had a legitimate expectation, including a promise from the Minister for Transport Noel Dempsey, that tolls would go only up. The court heard that the Minister told the Dáil in June last year that the by-laws [...]

Bank of Ireland has done a Friday afternoon news dump of a provisional set of accounts for 2010 and an associated announcement that it will make a dividend payment on the National Pension Farewell Fund’s preference shares in the company — last year, the Bank was under a “dividend stopper” order from the European Commission [...]

To the extent that we weren’t already at that point, we’ve reached the limit of Brian Lenihan’s ability to credibly perform his role as Minister for Finance.   A week after claiming that he had no mandate as Minister to implement the recapitalisation of AIB, B of I, and EBS, he offered a string of inflammatory [...]

We’ve known for a while that Brian Lenihan’s statements are very slippery and therefore require especially careful analysis.  Consider therefore today’s deferment of the recapitalisation of the AIB, Bank of Ireland, and EBS to March – This was to be completed by the end of February. However, the Minister has informed the European Commission, the [...]

What a long strange road it’s been.  September 2008 – Irish Nationwide has reiterated that it has received no takeover approach from Anglo Irish Bank. The development follows speculation regarding the future ownership of the society. Today – The Direction Orders enable the State to commence the process of restructuring Anglo and INBS as envisaged [...]

“Even Irish banks aren’t too big to fail”.  Don’t tell the Dept of Finance, which used to gloat over Iceland-Ireland comparisons.

Just announced.  Laois-Offaly was 3FF, 2 FG in 2007.  Could FF be looking at 1 now? (Maybe not — see below).   Hopefully that little issue of the caretaker Taoiseach not being a TD is sorted out by now, presumably on the grounds that he was a TD when he was given the status.   Anyway, [...]

Although we’re still in the phoney war stage of the election campaign, it seems that the basic FF strategy is to throw a bunch of, er, stuff, at the wall and see what sticks.  In that regard, we got today in the Senate an interesting and tendentious exchange between Sen. Alex White (Lab.) and Minister [...]

There is understandable amusement at the constitutional contortions involved in Gerry Adams resignation from the UK House of Commons so that he can concentrate on his candidacy for Louth in the 2011 general election.  But before presuming that there is something uniquely republican about the problems created by the resignation procedure, consider the list of [...]

It’s too soon to say that we are in the home stretch of our political drama.  Brian Lenihan, wearing his Minister of Finance hat – “If you want to ensure that some person doesn’t pay tax, someone else has to pay tax. That’s now how we’re going to operate as a State. So as a [...]

Who among us has forgotten the tearful scene at the end of Terminator 2 when everyone still standing realizes that although that awful T-1000 Terminator is dead, the good Terminator (Arnie) points out that he is technology from the future and therefore must destroy himself to leave no trace?  So he lowers himself into the [...]

Capping the worst 5 days work from a Taoiseach in Irish history, Brian Cowen has gone from being a reaffirmed leader of FF and sitting on his preference for an extended election campaign to losing 7 ministers (8 if you count the non-replacement of Micheal Martin) and the leadership of Fianna Fail, along with the [...]

Joe Higgins versus Jose Manuel Barroso: Higgins (page 9), Barroso (page 13).

Brian Cowen last discussed the government side-deals with the 2 independents on 10 November.  We’ve got the whole exchange below the fold, but the key point is that the Michael Lowry and Jackie Healy-Rae agreements are with the leader of Fianna Fail, not an Taoiseach.  Brian Cowen inherited them from Bertie Ahern but they are [...]