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

This is the fourth in a series of posts looking at who would or would not keep their seats if an election was called now. With not much  local polling to go on this is entirely my opinion and probably wrong. If you have any ideas on it please drop a comment.
Meath East. 

The Oireachtas has today launched a detailed profile based on the 2006 Census of all the constituencies in the country. The information is quite interesting and comprehensive and details all 42 constituencies in the country.

Thomas Byrne TD will be familiar to blog readers. The newly elected TD competed via blog and on the ground with Dominic Hannigan for votes last May. Anyhow, turns out his former speciality was solicitor specialising in EU law and in a public message on the blog he is inviting voters (I doubt he could be that picky [...]

Noel Dempsey is buying his re-election for €1.8 billion. Is he worth it? And what does that say about Irish politics. From the Sunday Business Post. 
Transport minister Noel Dempsey has intervened in a controversial pylon dispute by calling on EirGrid to re-route the high voltage lines underground along the new M3 motorway in Meath. Dempsey, [...]

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 [...]

It seems a happy coincidence that last week John Gormley announced national capacity for waste incineration in 2016 would be 400,000 tonnes and only two plants and today An Bord Pleanala give Indaver permission to increase the capacity of the Meath project and bring the capacity of their two plants in Cork and Meath up [...]

This appeared in one of the Sunday’s yesterday but the Green’s Ciaran Cuffe today announced the party had reservations about the building of an Outer Orbital Route from Drogheda to Naas ahead of improving public transport infrastructure. Cuffe suggests that the Orbital route lies beyond what was agreed in the Programme for Government and appears [...]

Minister John Gormley recieved a letter from chairman of the Petitions Committee in the EU Parliament. The letter suggests that building on the M3 should be halted following the findings made at Lismullen earlier this year.
The site at Lismullen is a National Monument but as was reported earlier, the recommendation of the National Museum was to preserve [...]

We are looking at the seats that the opposition did not take that could have won them the election. We already have 2 here  what follows is the next 2 and the result

FG Mairead McGuinness concedes in Louth… so no second seat there for Fine Gael… Also Harry is calling Meath East two FF, which I’m guessing would see the previously unfancied Tommy Byrne oust the long term favorite Dominic Hannigan. 

Michael Reade presents the Loost Talk show on LMFM. He is hosting debated between the candidates of Meath East Louth. He is hosting these debates on his site at loosetalkmicheal.com.
Today, (Independent) AJ Cahill, Candidate for Meath East, (Sinn Fein ) Councilor Joe Reilly, Candidate for Meath West and (Fine Gael) Regina Doherty, Candidate [...]

I set out tonight to focus in on blogs from left-wing candiates, but first a quick mention of
Thomas Byrne, FF candidate for Meath East, who got into a bit of a tizz with Mary Hanafin over the issue of education and autism. His comments were reported in the Drogheda Indo, while Thomas gets to grips [...]

Repost from Mulley.net
A.J. Cahill seems to be the one candidate so far that has a better grasp of the online turf that any other candidate, anywhere in Ireland. AJ is blogging and not afraid to pull some punches with this post about Dominic Hannigan and he is making some quite fresh and original videos and [...]

Found this for irishelection.tv, the third candidate in Meath East to make use of blogging and youtube independent candidate A.J Cahill. It goes to show that once it begins, others do indeed feel the need to follow.

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 [...]

Dominic Hannigan’s blog
Dominic Hannigan has started a blog. No doubt as part of Labour’s online strategy (read more here). It’s good. In a strange way. Sprinklings of how great Hannigan is in striving to clean up housing estates and get grants are interspersed with tales of war with County Council Officials.