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 [...]

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.

Announced this afternoon — the rule requiring that a driver on a 2nd provisional licence have a driver with a full licence in the car is postponed until end of June 2008. 8 months to clear the test backlog (209,000 currently on their 1st provisional, by the way). Statement from the Department of Transport below. [...]

If the Dail stays on schedule, ministerial questions will begin in about 10 minutes (link to live broadcast) at which time Noel Dempsey will be asked to explain the 6 week gap between his department knowing about the Shannon-Belfast Heathrow slot switch and him knowing about it.  Still unsolved, and perhaps to be explored in [...]

Here’s the Tribune story with the key points from Noel Dempsey’s interview with them about Shannon-Heathrow. In remarks that are likely to inflame the crisis, at least in the short-term, Dempsey states that: Shannon-Heathrow is a lost cause for now (consistent with the imminent deadline to have a new route in place); that he will [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 for [...]

Direct from a source in Athboy: FG HQ has directed that three candidates be chosen. Sarah’s complaint is being realised. So it’s Geraghty, but on a diluted ticket. Updates to follow. Update: As expected given the above, the convention has concluded without a vote, and the three candidates are Damien English TD, Graham Geraghty and [...]

As the selection convention for Meath West approaches, with Graham Geraghty in the running (by the way, as far as we can tell, Irish Election beat all the national media to the story that Geraghty was interested in running), the following are some of the rumours circulating among the Stop Geraghty campaign, as told to [...]

Fianna Fail seem to have found a solution to their Dublin North problem, with the replacement of Jim Glennon by John O’Leary, as reported by RTE. In more speculative news, a Fine Gael source in Meath contacted by Irish Election says that Graham Geraghty would be interested in running for them in Meath West, but [...]

First, a little history. Meath has just been converted from one 5 seat constituency into two 3 seat constituencies. The distribution used to be (eons ago) 2, 2, 1 (i.e 2 FF, 2 FG, 1 Labour). It then changed to 3, 2, (3 FF, 2 FG) and how Labour would love their seat back. The [...]