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

Finally reality and honesty are replacing delusion and denial in the debate about the Irish language. The most noticeable and welcome change is that the theories of linguistics, particularly those relating to endangered languages, or indeed the death of languages, are being used to give the debate a more scientific and realistic grounding. It was [...]

When I put the headline on this post, I thought, cheekily, that I could have gotten away with just saying Journalism in Ireland: Waste of Time. It would still be a launch pad for a viable post: over the last number of years, journalism in Ireland hasn’t been a pretty place. The big broadsheets have [...]

In Dublin the Greens were wiped off the map in the local elections. The result truly was horrific. There is no way to hide the fact that support for the party collapsed – pretty much dropped by about 50%.
But I noticed two things that I think were relevant in the decline.
First is the change in [...]

This is a response to a thought provoking article on political reform which appeared in the Irish Times. Dr Murphy raises a number of interesting points which have been missed by a series of previous commmentators on this subject over recent months. Notably, she brings up the subject of whether the Irish people have an [...]

No small amount of furore surrounded George Lee’s putting himself forward as a candidate in the forthcoming by-election. It made big news with his former employer for obvious reasons, not least that he gave them practically no notice. The story made headlines everywhere. Lee was talked about in canteens and snugs and both up and [...]

It is only right that we should look for the cause of Ireland’s particular economic crisis. After all, how else are we to repair the damage if we cannot identify the problem. Better still, how can we avoid a recurrence if we do not change whatever lies at the root of the breakdown.
Yet I think [...]

At this stage we have seen enough of Brian Cowen’s handling of the current crisis to make a call on his leadership skills. Unfortunately for him, but more to the point for us, he has failed quite miserably.

So how is Lenihan doing? I was amused by the phrase that went round when Lenihan was first appointed to Finance by Cowen : “he is very intelligent”. It made me laugh. Was he really? How do we know? And doesn’t it say something about the caliber of our senior public representatives that having a [...]

There is a palpable anger in the Irish air. For many, their standard of living has already gone into decline. Some have suffered wage freezes or wage cuts. Others have been dealt the ultimate economic blow and have lost their jobs. The numbers now are quite stark – there is something like 100,000 more on [...]

Even before my good employer cast me mercilessly onto the dole cue last September, I had already decided that if God were to spare me, I would spend my summer holiday in Ireland in 2009. The reason for this was not patriotism, but economic. Bean Thomaltaigh had given up work to return to college (little [...]

Yes, that Peig: the one that a young conservative, nationalist, and Catholic state employed to revive its native tongue. This year marks the 50th anniversary of Peig’s death and both the national broadcaster and some of the print media have been reappraising her significance.

For the guardians of the fledgling nation, Peig’s world was not only [...]

Sinn Féin’s stance on Lisbon shows us that they remain irredeemable purists. Despite all the evidence that governments across Europe have no stomach for re-opening the decade long reform process, Sinn Féin doggedly persist in arguing for renegotiation (Mary Lou McDonald, IT 2 Dec).

Recent revelations of lavish spending by Rody Molloy and his team at the head of FÁS have provoked an outcry. At a time when citizens are experiencing a painful decline in their standard of living, people have learned that the state agency partly responsible for generating employment has been splashing out a shameful abundance of [...]

This is an excerpt from the NY TIMES about Greenspan’s grilling by lawmakers in Washingon:
Mr. Greenspan conceded a serious flaw in his own philosophy that unfettered free markets sit at the root of a superior economy.
“I made a mistake in presuming that the self-interests of organizations, specifically banks and others, were such as that they [...]

Every time a crisis point arrives in relation to funds for our GPs the elephant in the living room pulls on its camoflage and goes completely invisible. Here is the truth: our GPs in Ireland are vastly overpaid for what they do.

I travelled to Brussels this week with a group of Irish journalists on a media trip to the EU which co-incided with the Summit. In the two days leading up to the Summit we met a number of Irish and non-Irish MEPs, several senior officials in the Commission and Parliament (including the highest ranking civil [...]