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

With a week to digest the election results, the Green Party might be credited with an emerging strategy to take into their negotiations for a renewed programme for government and, in theory at least, the second part of the process of government for however long it lasts. It was assessed here and elsewhere that the [...]

If there is one thing you should do today it’s buy The Irish Examiner. Go, g’wan, buy it. Even if you’re not from Cork. Even if you’re not from Munster. Feck it, go and buy it if you’ve never bought a paper or watched the news before. Please, for the good of the country, buy [...]

Dan Boyle spoke in Tralee today. The tone is very interesting. Here’s quotes pulled from the press release, my emphasis added…
“There are too many unresolved issues. Too many policy errors remain that have not been admitted to, areas where responsibility has not been taken. The policy of pump priming the property boom has been a [...]

Thanks to a tweet earlier today from the Green Party, my attention was drawn to their new-ish campaign to get Ireland growing its own food. Spearheaded by Junior Minister (re-appointed) Trevor Sargent, the campaign wants to get people planting and looking after their food needs.
Welcome to Trevor’s crib:

Update: The full list is available now from Taoiseach.gov.ie – 7 gone two in place for fifteen junior ministers.You might be interested in the speech that got McGuinness the sack.
Interestingly there is now no junior minister for drug strategy despite their merging of the drug and alcohol strategy recently. Dept of Enterprise retains three juniors [...]

Henry McDonald at the Guardian covers Eoghan Harris’ idea that the economic crisis is such as to demand the formation of a national unity government. Haven’t seen it anywhere in the papers this morning but
Cynics, and in Dublin’s media class they are legion, will scoff at the notion of national government. But as Harris has [...]

Click to embiggen.

Yesterday, in the aftermath of the climbdown regarding the Medical Cards fiasco, I read a post on the weblog of Green Party Justice Spokesperson Ciarán Cuffe, which dealt with the Medical Cards issue.
After reading the post, I gave him my view of the Fianna Fáíl / Green coalition, and put some questions to him and [...]

Suzy brings up an interesting point on the White Paper/Estimates and the budget cut for government agencies. Mergers and abolitions are taking place in 41 agencies and budget cuts/logistic sharing is the order of the day as well.
However some have fared better than others.
The Equality Authority’s budget has been cut by 43% and the Irish [...]

Even before the Irish people’s democratic decision to reject the fatally-flawed Lisbon Treaty, (which would have deepened the democratic-deficit in Europe still further), the source of Libertas funding was a bane of “yes” campaigners. To the elite, the possibility of the ‘mainstream’ parties being so decisively outspent by this upstart pro-business [...]

So Brian Cowen continues to slowly dismantle the Bertie Ahern machine (on which note, anyone see a Fianna Fail ‘Yes’ poster with Cowen’s face on it?). The announcement that the construction industry wont be dining in Ballybrit will be greeted with delight in the offices of the Green Party and Finian McGrath as a potential [...]

Irish TImes Poll this morning has FF at 42%, FG at 26%, Lab at 15%, SF 6% , GP 4% and PD 1%
And why wouldn’t 42% of the country consider voting for a man not shy of belting out a few songs?

Cowen’s political positioning of the government is very much the slowly slowly affair befitting of a month in May. The cabinet reshuffles were quite deft, keeping the big names happy but at arms length from a putsch while the junior ministries gave the backbenches more hope than Bertie ever dared. It is a mark of [...]

While no date has yet been set, we now have the wording of the Lisbon Treaty Referendum. It isn’t readable, short or simple but it seems to cover much more of the bases than a simple adoption of the Lisbon treaty – designed as it is to deflect worries about creeping EU statism. Even though [...]

There are two small but interesting pieces in the Irish Times today concerning Labour and the PDs. The PDs are meeting in Galway today in a meeting organised by Noel Grealish to discuss future direction. Though the meeting is due to be “councillor-driven” and Mary Harney won’t be present it is interesting and symptomatic of [...]

They’re being voted on at the moment. As expected, the motion to make it party policy to support the treaty fell short of the required 2/3 majority. But the motion to make it party policy to oppose the treaty will also fail. So the only one that really matters is the third [...]