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

A couple of semi-formed thoughts of issues that perhaps deserved a little more attention in all the relentless punditry.

Today in Commercial Court – Mr Justice Peter Kelly was told today that the [M1] tolling company is claiming it had a legitimate expectation, including a promise from the Minister for Transport Noel Dempsey, that tolls would go only up. The court heard that the Minister told the Dáil in June last year that the by-laws [...]

Minister engages in excessive expenditure for private jet citing pressures of schedule and lack of commercial options to attend an event.  Resulting public outcry causes minister to resign before he is sacked. It’s France, last month, when the aid minister Alain Joyandet chartered a jet to go a donors conference for Haiti — conveniently located [...]

Gordon Brown statement to House of Commons on Hillsborough Agreement – None of this could have been achieved without working closely with the Irish government – and I pay tribute to Brian Cowen, the Irish Foreign Minister, Micheal Martin and to the Taoiseach’s predecessors Bertie Ahern and Albert Reynolds. Who’s missing from that list of [...]

Fianna Fail Councillor Nick Killian, from Meath, hasn’t completely removed the Fianna Fail logo from his leaflets (see PDF), but you would be forgiven for thinking he had. In an interview with the Meath Chronicle he gives a pretty horrific review of the party under Ahern and Cowen and the scale of the mess Fianna [...]

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.

Interesting reading in the Financial Times today. First, a short comment piece by Quentin Peel on Bertie and the Lisbon referendum; nothing that we don’t know in Ireland but since it reflects chatter in Brussels, perhaps indicative of growing nervousness amongst the Eurocrats about Bertie’s handling of the vote. Second, an article looking at the [...]

No two ways about it, the main man Noel Dempsey is having a nightmare of a time in Transport. He has been badly undone by Aer Lingus and the FOI revelations (even though the civil servant took the rap) and now his handling of the driver’s licence regulations is woeful beyond belief. How can one screw up [...]

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 [...]

Noel Dempsey is no doubt delighted that he is in the position to deliver an outer orbital route that looks likely to considerable help Meath’s commuting voters. The report delivered to him last night suggests building an outer orbital route from Drogheda (south of the new port-so what was the effing port tunnel for?) through Meath [...]

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 [...]

So Dick Roche decided to give the go-ahead on the M3 on Tuesday, around the time it became clear that a Fianna Fáil/Green coalition was going to happen. The decision didn’t need cabinet approval and the Department of the Environment decided not to issue a press release on the matter.  According to the department that [...]

  Very good vote management in Meath east for FF   Wallace on 25 percent, Byrne on 18.2 McEntee 15.9%, Hannigan 11.77% Regina 9.9 % A. Fitzgerald 5.6% Finnegan 5.8%   65% of the boxes open – prediction for 2 FF 1 FG. But the transfers to play for…

One bit of Sunday election trivia — Meath kept Graham Geraghty on the bench today at Croke Park in the win over Kildare.  While Graham might have liked the face time 4 days before voting, the selectors may have felt that there was a risk of exposing him to a wider than usual range of [...]