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

REd Mum has the post on Michael Kennedy TD at the pensioner protest on Wednesday.
He spoke of the money given to single parents and their ‘10 kids’ and, get this, ‘FREE HOUSES’. (They are actual quotes.) Seriously my daughter is 16 years old now and he is saying there are free houses, given what I [...]

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 [...]

Labour’s Cllr Dermot Lacey notes over on his blog that Dublin City Council have started their voter registration drive for the new electoral register.  Nice posters, which include messages in English, Irish, Chinese and what is presumably Polish, are up in Smithfield and other areas with high numbers of people who don’t have English as [...]

PD local councillor Cait Keane has joined Fine Gael in Dublin South. There is by-election coming up and with Tom Kitt steppign down in 2012 Fine Gael might lick their chops at a potentail third seat.

As Bertie Ahern does his screen-test for a future job on The Sunday Game or Late Late, he was quick to defend his handling of the economic downturn. Unemployment now at 5.1% and construction workers falling like flies - and little re-training to give them a hand up.
The Dublin Central TD, who quit office in [...]

A thread on boards.ie has been the source of some impressive citizen activism in the last week and it seems the campaign there is just getting started.
As some people already know, Dublin City Council recently signed a deal with advertising group JCDecaux which would see a number of advertising panels erected on the city’s streets [...]

Pardon the spelling if dickying is incorrect but I highlighted a post earlier today on Open Europe - as much for myself to return to later than anything else and yes those links in the sidebar do change!. They have a copy of the original Commission poll(PDF) that informed the awful reporting in the Independent [...]

The Dublin LGBTQ Pride Festival is well underway, and continued yesterday evening with the annual debate in the Walton Theatre in TCD at 7.30pm. The motion for discussion was : “Same-Sex Couples Want Access to Civil Marriage, not Civil Partnerships”Chair: Sen. Ivana BacikProp: Sen. David Norris & Ailbhe Smyth (MarriagEquality)Opp: Neil Ward (Dublin Pride) & [...]

When Gordon Brown took over from Tony Blair last summer, he was hit by the floods and then the foot and mouth outbreak — and went up in the polls. Brian Cowen might need a similar trend over the next couple of months. With Lisbon and the economy already looking like the hot potatoes of [...]

Bertie revealed yesterday evening that he has been offered, or at least in discussion about, a role as an international conflict mediator over the course of his trip.
ON THE last day of his US visit, Taoiseach Bertie Ahern revealed that he had received approaches “at the highest levels” about a role for him in international [...]

The RPA released a consulation document today on the feasibility of a new Luas line ‘E’ from Dundrum to Christchurch, covering Terenure and Harold’s Cross. The proposal for line E was not included in Transport 21 but the RPA are hoping that the study will be included in a later revision of the project. It [...]

One of Bertie Ahern’s home stretch events today was to launch the Dublin Airport Authority’s plan for Dublin Airport City.   Not to put too fine a point on it, this seems like one of the crazier proposals to have emerged over the last year, and symptomatic of much of what is wrong with governance and [...]

Dublin City Council is considering the merits of imposing a “tourist tax” of €1 per night on beds in hotels, hostels and B&Bs in the city in order to raise additional revenue.
Ignoring the fact that this is the taxation equivalent of licking your plate clean after large a steak dinner, there are many questions that [...]

Brian Cowen released a statement in the last hour announcing his candidacy for the Fianna Fail leadership and succession of Bertie Ahern. It is interesting to see he was nominated by Brian Lenihan, a man widely tipped to have his eye on becoming the Brian Cowen’ to Brian Cowen and succeeding the next Taoiseach when [...]

The time of the departure of Bertie Ahern has now been announced. What of his legacy, his place in Irish history? Here are some points that might be considered.

This post actually started a while back, the last time Bertie mentioned we would be tightening our belts this year, I decided to finish it because he mentioned it again yesterday.
We know that the US is as good as in a recession, their central bank doesnt seem to have much capacity to stall the bad [...]