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

By 14.29 yesterday afternoon the benches of the Dáil and Seanad were almost entirely empty. Two minutes later during the opening prayer there was a scattering of TDs in the Dáil chamber. And what’s this? No Taoiseach for priority questions… merely a typically bedraggled Brian Cowen giving an answer of breathtaking tedium on the state [...]

Reading Cian’s post on Irish Election I was in complete agreement with him as regards the overall analysis. For some Independents the deal with FF, so far, has reaped considerable dividends. They have essentially cemented themselves within a process whereby they can continue to draw down actual political achievements that resonate on the ground, with [...]

Pat Leahy writing in the Sunday Business Post the other day noted something that I’d missed. When talking about the ‘fate of the opposition’ parties over the next twelve months he suggested that ‘…there is [a] significant cleavage emerging between the two main opposition parties following the failure of the so-called ‘Mullingar Accord’ to deliver [...]

It took me a while to realise there was something very odd about the latest RedC poll in the Sunday Business Post. Sure, Fianna Fáil has dipped precipitously. Well, after the month they’ve had one would think they’d better be down, at least a bit. Provisional Licences, pay increases, the latest noises from the Tribunal [...]

I thought it couldn’t get worse. I was wrong. And now, due to Eoghan Harris, we see the Coolacrease situation become elevated to a semi-political issue, hence my posting this to Irish Election as well as the Cedar Lounge Revolution.
Eoghan Harris in today’s Sunday independent writes about Coolacrease (Tom McGurk also writes about it sensibly [...]

So then. As P O’Neill noted that lasted precisely three days. 72 hours if we want to be picky. A whole host of expensive Road Safety Authority advertising in the weekend newspapers burnt on the alter of political expediency since, as the Department of Transport notes:

Well, now there’s no surprise. Clicking over to Politics.ie what does one see but a nascent campaign against the latest attempt by the Government to reform the Driving License situation. In a mass mobilisation that has those of us who have struggled long and hard on numerous political issues weeping into our pints the airwaves [...]

Reading Politics.ie recently, what do I see? Well, actually, reading Magill I see an inaccurate swipe at Politics.ie in the most recent issue. Wigmore wrote:
Is there anything as awful as political blog sites? Not the sites of writers and personalities, but the bulletin boards and chat rooms. The hope that the [...]

Quite a day down at our second chamber, perhaps slightly less so in the first. Alex White and Pearse Doherty were uncontentious and professional. Perhaps a little nervous if anything. Shannon loomed large throughout the afternoon.
And it has to be said that there were quite a number of younger faces there. Which is probably good.
Eoghan [...]

So, what to make of the news yesterday about Fianna Fáil exploring the ‘idea of advancing itself as a political party in the North’? Certainly it has considerable support amongst many FF members. But the more one examines the idea the less feasible it becomes.

Reading about the current events down the Tribunal in the Sunday Business Post is illuminating. Sure, Bertie Ahern had a rough day on Friday. Those jeers outside can’t be good - to put it mildly. Whether they’re quite up there with Haughey is a different matter. And… protestations notwithstanding, this constant batting too and fro [...]

Interesting post by Simon here on irishelection who seems to be dubious about Eamon Gilmores opening leadership campaign gambit [sub req'd], the idea that Labour should aim for 30 seats. Easy to say one might think, and a good five years until it was proven one way or another. But I suspect that if Gilmore [...]

So, the political catastrophe for Labour that was the Mullingar Accord continues to work its dark magic. First it skewers the Labour Party in the General Election, now it fells Pat Rabbitte.
I have two reasons to thank Pat Rabbitte for assistance he gave me over the years. So while politically I fear his tenure will [...]

A Big Day in the North…or so Black Grape had it… back in 1995. So, what’s up next week? Why, the British-Irish Council meet, and as Gerry Moriarty writes in yesterdays Irish Times:
First Minister the Rev Ian Paisley and Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness are scheduled to greet Gordon Brown at Parliament Buildings, Stormont, on [...]

One of the real problems of ‘reading’ Irish politics in the current period (since the 1990s) is the difficulty in assessing how much deliberate or contrived disagreements are used in order to shore up the credentials of one party or another in Government. We saw something of this in the first PD/FF administration where issues [...]

Well, this is strange. We’re in the eye of the hurricane, as it were, with one swirling mass of electoral chaos behind us, and another just ahead. Although the last person I pointed that out to was Cael on Politics.ie who was subsequently banned…so perhaps he hit the chaos a bit earlier than everyone else.
I’m [...]