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

This post stems from a discussion in the comments section under ‘All politics is local‘. We were comparing and contrasting the UK and Irish systems in terms of how rooted politicians must be within their local constituencies. I think there is significant difference between the two jurisdictions, to some degree due to FPTP (First Past [...]

From my inbox this morning. North Sligo saw a new poster on it’s poles yesterday. Joe Leonard is a councillor of long standing (23 years) elected to Sligo County Council. He was not selected by his local party last year to contest the election but was later added to the ticket. Describing himself in the [...]

Sent to us from Mayo – the first bumper sticker and the first anti-candidate ephemera of Elections 2009.  Suppose if it was going to be any candidate it would be The Chairman.

Reports reached me over the weekend of sightings of tag rugby games by canvassers in various parks in the South East Dublin area.  The story went that canvassers went from park to park in t-shirts playing matches and there were posters about and much merriment.   No match reports or sightings of new players emerging to [...]

Are you running in the forthcoming Local or European Elections?  Do you blog, twitter or have a facebook supporters page, videoblog, bebo or myspace?  Do you know a candidate who does? During the last election on Irish Election a number of us did regular roundups of candidates using social media and what was being said [...]

Not that it’s any use in solving the problem, but has anyone done a cost comparison on the storage costs for the e-voting machines versus the cost of having a backup radar system for Dublin Airport?  In a cinematic note, the existence of a backup radar system was of course a key plot twist in [...]

Last night, unexpectedly, I was called by Newstalk’s Breakfast Show and asked how I thought the electorate were reacting to the personal attacks between Enda Kenny and Bertie Ahern. Firstly, I pointed out that my record of reading the mind of the electorate is similar to my success at becoming heavyweight champion of the world. [...]

I see today that the Berkeley Court and Jury’s Ballsbridge have closed for renovations. When I mean renovations, I mean they are going to be completely knocked down and a large complex of apartments are going to be built there. The original plans were pretty massive and were vetoed by the council. I was never [...]

Originally posted on Green Ink: The current crop of PD election material features the cartoons below. Following on from Simon’s accurate analysis of the battery imagery, not to mention the implicit fatalism of the Don’t Throw It All Away campaign, I have to say these fail to offer anything but the image of a party [...]

Senator Tom Morrisey has money to burn it seems, and if you ever wondered where the Imps went to…. Conor Lenihan has one!

Yes tonight here on IE we are announcing the launch of ‘my candidates stuff is tackier than yours’. I still have metal badges and a sweatshirt from the Mary Robinson Campaign from 1990 but this is 17 years later and candidates and canvassers have access to so many more exciting things to give away, festoon [...]