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

Minister for Foreign Affairs Micheal Martin is in charge of the Lisbon II campaign.  With summer schools apparently forming the main forum for policy debate with the Dail in recess, he was perhaps giving us a preview of what the Yes campaign will look like in this evening’s remarks to the MacGill event.  Writing as [...]

Here we go again.  Aer Lingus is withdrawing more services from Shannon.  But this row is going to play out very differently than the end of Shannon-Heathrow.   The latter row caught the government on the hop but also featured an Aer Lingus in a very different mood, confident that it could launch a sub-hub in [...]

Many of the polls have showen a big slump in Fianna Failure and rises for Labour and Fine Gael. But if an election was called tomorrow who would lose out and who would win? I am going to try and do a review of all the constiuencies. If people have Views on anyone please drop [...]

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.

Diarmaid Ferriter’s 10 part series on De Valera for RTE radio 1 concluded yesterday. It was very interesting and well worth a listen on the still-available podcasts. Of course the series is linked to his re-revisionist book about Dev which itself was the source of a pseudo-controversy regarding its distribution to schools. Anyway, over 10 [...]

Video from yesterday’s Save Our Slots Rally I am unable to embed them here, but they can be found at the below link Link. Update Simon. Video added below

I believe one motion on Shannon has been defeated by 1 vote. 68 to 67.  Watch or listen live.

Green Ink

Ongoing attempts to quantify the damage done by the Aer Lingus pullout suggest that 10,000 jobs may be at risk. Its primarily an issue of infrastructure and access to the region, which has become heavily populated with FDI and multinational companies thanks to Shannon Development. Fianna Fail is doing the usual trick of providing its [...]

Moving the Heathrow slots from Shannon (a 4 hour drive from Dublin and airport of choice for those in Limerick, Clare, Tipperary, much of Connacht and the North West) to Belfast (now a two hour leisurely drive from Dublin Airport thanks to the M1 looks like it has had its first victim. The Dromoland Castle [...]

Pat Breen elected

Clare tally – missing 1700 votes. See full details.

Clare tallies with Ennis boxes still to open james breen 6.87, pat breen 12.37, carey 8%, b daly 11%, dooley 22%, fitz 1.6%, kileen 12.2%, Quinn 6%, Mulcahy 8.8  

This is a story that we have not mentioned on this site for some reason. That of Clare TD Tony Kileen asking for early release for a convicted murderer. He claims that is was from his constituency office and he never saw it or had anything to do with it. This after he also pleaded [...]

There’s been an interesting trend in the recent TG4 polls conducted by TNS/MRBI compared to national figures being delivered by RedC and TNS/MRBI in the Sunday Business Post and The Irish Times respectively. Added to this can be the reporting in The Kerryman of two polls seen there. There appears to be an increasing trend [...]

Giving in to terrorism seems to be the mantra down in Green Central: Deputy Gormley said, “Security experts agree that this latest terror threat is ominous and should be taken very seriously. Stepping up security to the required level could prove to be extremely expensive and, as we know from the London bombings, does not [...]