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.

And the overall economy?  Today’s Wall Street Journal reports on what sounds like advanced deliberations inside Dell about shifting its manufacturing capacity from Limerick to Lodz in Poland.  Office jobs in Ireland would be retained.  But as the article explains, Dell is unusual among computer makers in its retention of substantial manufacturing capacity — most [...]

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 [...]

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.

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 [...]

2 FF elected. Looks like another FF to be elected and a FG. Last Seat between Green and FG. No one elected in Dublin North Niall Collins (FF) elected in Limerick West

The scandal from Limerick East is that Kieran O’Donnell is looking strong to take O’Malley’s seat and even potentially pip Peter Power for the fourth (2 boxes missing or lost from the tally). Limerick West is looking set for a repeat performance with both Dan Neville and Michael Finucane only 350 votes apart after the [...]

But Willie didn’t really know what it was he was signing. Willie O’Dea thought he was putting his signiture to a leaflet for Niall Collins when he signed the dotted line. In reality, he was signing a letter urging former former constituents to give their Number One vote to Niall Collins. 1,300 copies of the [...]

Did Willie O’Dea put his posters with the dodgy punctuation up to take advantage of the celebrations associated with the ancient pagan feast of Bealtain?

It has been ten years since a Labour candidate has put themselves forward for a Dail seat in West Limerick. But that is all about to change as 27 year old James Heffernan has been put forward to represent the party in the constituency, with hopes to win a seat there.

While our Limerick East Fianna Faillers spent last week calling each other names through the local media, one Limerick West Fianna Fail election candidate thought he was do a little childish behaviour of his own, by teasing some young children. Niall Collins was probably hoping people would remember his name come election time when he [...]