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

Well it didn’t take long for Leo Varadkar to join the queue for the ‘Will FG just stop’ treatise that Simon has started. Having watched Dr. Varadkar from afar during some of his student days I’m not surprised. I’m only waiting for Lucinda Creighton to call for women to be charged for post abortion [...]

The report of the 2007 Consituency Commission is out, some would say a little bit too late but how and ever. Kerry is to remain split, with Kerry South a 3 seater while Kerry North joins to West Limerick in also remaining a 3 seater. Dublin Euro is a 3 seater, Dun Laoghaire is a [...]

Ok so we lost Joe. And we miss him. We really do. At the Dail yesterday they all gave him a nod. Tony Gregory said the place wouldn’t be the same. It won’t. It will. But it won’t.
Fianna Fail are still in charge but Fine Gael’s muscles have gotten some electoral steroids. How hard will [...]

The drunk and the powerful came together, they came with their wives and their fans, they slapped backs and winked at each other for they knew what so many had denied for so long - that Fianna Fail was going to win the 2007 general election. They gathered in groups of two and three, these [...]

Probably the TD who took the Dail stage most seriously and the best one at needling Bertie. A reminder of one of his classics below, I’m sure others have their own.

Pillion Passenger at the count centre in Dublin West.
Final Poll in Dublin West
Brian Lenihan, FF, 8496
Leo Varadkar, FG, 8710
Joan Burton, Lab, 7905
Joe Higgins, Soc, 7472
Top three are elected. Quota was 8496. Brian Lenihan reaced it first.
Varadkar elected on fifth count which just left Burton and Higgins. Burton
takes the seat by about 500 votes. Labour looked [...]

Welcome to the second edition for Green Party Global Warming. This is Hot or Not but for Green Party candidates.
Today it’s the turn of the young bucks of the Green Party and also possibly the semi-celebrity lookalikes. So who is hotter?

Press release titles of the day? For the chuckle factor anyway. Kenny’s appeal goes down the YouTubes in video views stakes - Ambrose. Councillor Siobhan Ambrose, Fianna Fáil candidate in Tipperary South thinks that because more people have seen her youtube video than a version of Enda Kenny’s party conference speech [...]

Amidst the plethora of “2006-in-review” articles populating today’s papers, there is one very interesting piece in the Tribune. The way our electoral system works makes polls slightly unhelpful—ignoring particularity within constituencies and also the nature of transfers—but the Tribune have taken a look across the most contested constituencies to attempt to predict the likely election [...]

So it’s Dublin West.  We noted a while back that the Census results had the potential for a tricky constitutional problem: that a constituency might have grown too quickly to maintain its constitutional minimum of 1 TD per 30,000 voters.    And it’s happened.