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

I’ve been fairly cautious in recent times about the shifts of this election. You’ll notice no great statements about how Irish politics is about to be reshaped one way or another. No hostages to fortune about the inevitable victory of the alternative coalition or how Ahern will bounce his way back to power.
And I don’t [...]

To my mind there are three great political resources for those of us interested in such things on the web in Ireland, above and beyond individual blogs. Slugger O’Toole and Irish Election both provide a comprehensive filter for a variety of viewpoints. And then there is of course Politics.ie. As a forum for debate it’s [...]

Interesting piece on the Independents on the Pat Kenny show this morning on RTÉ.
Think back to 2002. Heady days. Fianna Fáil on the point of a significant, but not comprehensive, political victory. Fine Gael recording one of it’s worst polls ever. Both Sinn Féin and the Green Party cementing themselves as more than [...]

Following on from yesterdays partial recantation of my previous opinion that the Election was dull, let me complete the process by briefly drawing your (plural, I trust) attention to today’s interesting developments. The most major of which was the way the focus shifted from Ahern and the complex (or was it Byzantine as Pat Rabbitte [...]

26 days
Hard not to think it was a bit fluffed. Two reasons strike me for saying that. Firstly the fact it was called on a Sunday and that he didn’t wait until next week, but instead had to meet the President just prior to her departure from the country to the United State. Secondly the [...]

Fabulous news everyone.
Should we think of casting our democratic vote for Fianna Fáil we are invited to “take the next steps”. Where? To what purpose? Baby steps or great leaps a la Neil Armstrong? Shuffle, or stride? Forward or back? Up or down? Over and out.
Should by contrast it be Fine Gael that takes our [...]

Reading smiffy’s post here and some of the responses to it, what strikes me most forcibly about this period of Labour history is how it has ceased to be a national party (the 1/2 in the dreaded 2 and 1/2 party system) and is now one of a number of parties of and on the [...]

Strange, reading this earlier today. The policing issue has clearly become crucial to the further implementation of the Good Friday Agreement in it’s current form. And yet the news emanating from both Sinn Féin and the Democratic Unionist Party is far from good.
Firstly, and this is hardly a surprise, I entirely support the GFA and [...]

One of the perennial jibes cast against Independent politicians is that they are effectively little more than ‘parish pump’ politicians, adrift to some extent upon the whim of their constituents and with no responsibility or obligation to the wider political system. And the problem is there is a considerable element of truth in this. The [...]

Okay, the last post on this subject was addressing the need for some bluesky thinking on the means by which Fine Gael and Labour might take on Fianna Fáil at the next election, and the suggestion was that the big tent should be extended further in line with the Inter-Party Coalitions of the 1940s and [...]

Originally posted on the Cedar Lounge Revolution.
Continuing our dissection of 1990s politics and the implications for today and the forthcoming election, and why not? It’s more than time to cast a jaundiced eye over that particular period because it reveals more than enough about the contemporary situation, a discussion on P.ie (Politics.ie) caught my eye [...]

Rumours that the latest National Development Plan will include a significant funding of cross border links has led to some complaints about such an idea here.

Okay, so for Fine Gael and Labour the last weekend has been—and let’s be blunt—fairly abysmal. Desperately bad polls, which despite the best attempts of those who live and die by such data to spin them better (”it’ll take (one) or (two) or (three)—extend ad infinitum—to be sure of a trend… something suspiciously wrong with [...]

Apologies to Wagger and Simon for covering some of the same ground. Originally posted on the Cedar Lounge Revolution.
The reason neither Labour nor Fine Gael went for the metaphorical jugular with Bertie Ahern has today become clear. This was because they must have tested the water and realised the issue was pure poison for them [...]

I’m wondering if I was the only one this morning who felt that the Archbishop Brady/Dr. Paisley meeting earlier today might well be a harbinger of an unintended consequence of the Peace Process. Hearing Archbishop Brady talking about the central position of “marriage and the family” and “faith-based” education struck me as rather intriguing. After [...]

A most fascinating—and arguably somewhat contradictory—editorial in the Irish Times [sub required] today which cuts to the heart of what this whole shambles is about, both in terms of laying out both perspectives and also the genuine dichotomy facing the Progressive Democrats.