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

Jim McDaid is on Newstalk going against the current Medical Card Fiasco seemingly putting the blame squarly at the PD’s or should I say Mary Harney.  Saying that Mary has taken it the wrong direction. He also seemed to indicate that he will vote against the bill.  This is again Fianna Fail playing its own [...]

From IMF 
 

Hat TIp Stephen Kinsella

I am sure many aspects of the budget will be discussed by bloggers in the next few days. And indeed the papers are full of it. But One thing that I want to have a look at is the increase in University Registration Charges to €1,500. When are we going to stop the pretence that [...]

From RTE.
Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny has announced he is taking a 5% pay cut next year, as a symbolic gesture.
He was speaking at the launch of Fine Gael’s Budget proposals, which include 5,000 voluntary redundancies in the civil service.
The party is also suggesting a freeze on pay rises and increments for those in the [...]

From RTE News.
Environment Minister John Gormley has confirmed that he made a mistake in appointing a Fianna Fáil councillor from Donegal and a Green party councillor from Monaghan to the board of the Private Residential Tenancies Board earlier this year.
Is this the first time ever an Irish Politician said they were wrong before they were [...]

From RTE
New figures from property website Daft.ie show the average house price is now €312,500. It says an average fall of 3.8% in house prices was recorded between July and September.
This means that prices are down by almost 11% compared to the same period last year.
This is compared to a fall of 12% in [...]

Just getting around to reading the Morris Report. One quick note. In the Irish Times Bredan Howlin (gets Jim Higgins party wrong) says
“I am confident that I acted responsibly at all times when allegations were made to me by a criminal lawyer with more than 20 years practice regarding senior gardaí in 2000. I brought [...]

Senator Mary White has one of the most interesting ideas of the past while.
Mary White, Dublin Fianna Fáil Senator and campaigner on the prevention of suicide in Ireland, will present a motion at tonight’s Parliamentary Party meeting to call for the reduction of paracetamol pack sizes on sale in shops, supermarkets and petrol stations.
She points [...]

Photo owned by maveric2003 (cc)What caused the latest world economic crisis? Toxic Credit products? Sub-Prime Mortgages, Galway races tent, ninja morgages, Massive bonuses to executives? No none of these were the cause of the latest crisis they were simply the cliffs we were pushed off. But they were not the push that sent us [...]

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.