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

So Mandelson is coming back to the UK cabinet. So what is the chances of Charlie McCreavy coming back?

The subject of David McWilliams column today is how the GAA transfer index shows a growing trend of emigration from Ireland.
According to the GCTI, emigration is on the increase from all over Ireland and it is recurring in precisely the age group that we need most — our young, fit people. What makes the change [...]

Sarkozy is a genius. See people think he is for the Lisbon Treaty but is in fact against it. Yes Irish Election can reveal that he is purposely trying to destroy the EU. Take his latest idea.
The president of France, the current holder of the European Union’s rotating presidency, has floated the scheme as a [...]

Stephen Collins writes for the Irish Times so you would expect some sort of intelligent thinking. I mean it is his job after all. He is not a Kevin Myres columnist who is there to provoke, he does not need to be deeply incisive it is about filling the letters page. Stephen Collins is there [...]

I got this email from Georg Pichler of rigardi.org and I thought I would pass it on.
As you might have heard the governmenting parties, Social Democrats (SPOE) and Conservatives (OEVP) have decided to end their coalition. After 1 1/2 years of constant quarrel and hardly any progress, the Social Democrats have decided to switch their [...]

After the Lisbon Treaty debackle Leo Varadker came out and critisesed Enda Kenny in what could be said as the early stages of a coup. So what does Enda do. Blame Leo Varadker for the recent poor form.
In an apparent reference to the claims by one Fine Gael councillor that young TDs such as Leo [...]

Me and everyone else here would like to pass on their sympathies to the Brennan family on the death of Seamus Brennan.

I was looking for the Reeling the Years clip about 1980s immigration and found this. Hindsight ehh.

There has been some talk about how the Irish Referendum vote stops further EU integration. So it is interesting to see that French plans to have a referendum when a country with five per cent of the EU population as a whole (i.e. Turkey) wants to join has failed in the French Senate. Resulting in [...]

The No Campaign failed to make the Abortion issue a major reason to vote no. But they certainly convinced the rest of Europe again. And yet again we have another person rather then reading the Eu-barometer results but let there own bias dictate their views. Sylvie Goulard, the president of the French section of [...]

At the weekend, Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan said that would mean savings rather than cutbacks.
From RTE The spin merchants deserve a bonus for that line. Genius

So the Polish President says he will not sign.
Polish president Lech Kaczynski has said he will not sign the EU’s Lisbon Treaty, saying it was pointless after Irish voters rejected it in a referendum last month.
“For the moment, the question of the treaty is pointless,” Mr Kaczynski was quoted as saying in the online version [...]

Irish Economic Growth contraction. From Irish Times
Economic growth in the Republic shrank by 1.5 per cent between January and March this year, according to data released by the Central Statistics Office this morning.
Growth rates recorded for the Republic during the first quarter 2008 showed that Gross Domestic Product (GDP) contracted by 1.5 per cent, [...]

This caused a Storm in Sweden recently.
Swedish media have erroneously reported that the EU plans to register and bill all bloggers, setting off a firestorm of reaction in the country.
And there is a lesson to all of us in the responsibility of the media there. But this part caught my eye.
Speaking to the EUobserver, Ms [...]

I am not sure if this is Austria playing hard ball with Brussels but Austrian chancellor, Alfred Gusenbauer has said that if the Treaty text is changed for Ireland then Austria would have a referendum as well.
Also
Hannes Swoboda, vice-president of the Socialists in the EU assembly, told Der Standard newspaper: “It is not possible [...]

One of the EU’s problems is that there is no shared Identity unlike the USA. This is something that is always pull back the EU from its goal of a closer union. So Janez Jansa’s solution? And EU soccer team.
While maybe not a solution it certainly is interesting to talk about so pick your starting [...]