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

Barack Obama’s victory might not have been certain until late on, however his online victory was secured long before this. Anyone who attended the conference last month where Damian O Broin and Zack Exley gave an incredible breakdown of the online campaign would know that Obama’s superiority was borne of simplicity, ruthless organising and intelligent [...]

Thanks to everyone who came on Saturday and those who watched the live stream online. Thanks to the guests for speaking - especially Zack for making the trip over to talk to us. I am currently working on getting the video uploaded. Tom Duke did a fantastic job of streaming and grabbing the video. If [...]

Joe Zefran is the editor of RTE online at RTE.ie - the online presence of the State broadcaster and he is going to be attending the Irish Social Media conference on October 4. He will be talking about the developments in the mass media here with regard to the internet and technological change. I met [...]

Before lunch at the conference on October 4 we will be hearing from a number of people active in the NGO sector on the role of the internet and social media in their work and activism. Our own Damian O Broin from askdirect will be along to talk about his work and we are working [...]

I am a bit behind the curve on this one -wierd since we are organising it! In the next couple of days, we here at irishelection.com and  partners at EU Irish Representation will be announcing full details of the 2008 Blogging and Social Media Conference. Running on October 4th in the EU Building on Dawson [...]

Reviewing one online campaign, and looking forward to the next.

Six months on, it seems fairly clear that the impact of the web on the 2007 General Election campaign was minimal at best. Much was made in advance of May 2007 about the potential impact of the blogs (I remember the enthusiasm of the blogging the [...]

I think that Harry is right in that this conference is primarily for internal consumption. Most conferences are about posturing these days but this one has more of an air of regrouping about it. Eamon Gilmore used his speech to outline that Labour’s new position politics is not all that radically different from its old [...]

The Labour conference started this evening at 6:30, Eamon Gilmore was due to give the opening speech but due to the death of his mother Joan Burton opened the conference. Don’t forget that this is easily the most connected party conference that has happened here and hopefully will bring others along with it. The conference [...]

Fianna Fail today sat down to their “think-in” out in the wilds of Wicklow. Chaired by Dermot Ahern, the gathering is a welcome opportunity for TDs, councillors and MEPs to get their heads around the serious business of governing for the next five years. An Taoiseach was plainly delighted to be sprung from Dublin Castle, [...]

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 [...]

Flynn: ‘I never believed I did anything wrong’
Insight into the people of Mayo’s strange dependence on the Flynn can be found in the following film.

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 [...]

FF and Greens still in contact

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 [...]