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

Peruse the diagram above. The green/yellow states are those voting with DREs with a voter-verified paper-trail (VVPR) (except in Tennessee, Colorado and Maryland where the relevant legislation has been passed but doesn’t come into force this year) and with/without (respectively) a paper audit-trail. The red-states are those requiring neither a [...]

Over at the Property Pin they have been digging away at the proposals in yesterday’s budget for affordable housing provision. The website set up (homechoiceloan.ie) appears to suggest the government is steppign into subprime mortgages for those refused by banks and building societies as well as stipulating the houses purchased come from the 35,000-50,000 new, [...]

Even before the Irish people’s democratic decision to reject the fatally-flawed Lisbon Treaty, (which would have deepened the democratic-deficit in Europe still further), the source of Libertas funding was a bane of “yes” campaigners. To the elite, the possibility of the ‘mainstream’ parties being so decisively outspent by this upstart pro-business [...]

In a great day for Irish and European democracy, the Irish people, on a higher turnout than Nice II, rejected the illegitimate and anti-democratic Lisbon Treaty by 53.4% to 46.6%. In doing so, they have struck a blow for freedom and against remote, unaccountable and undemocratic rule by unelected bureaucrats in Brussels. They have shown [...]

In late November Mary Harney was under immense pressure over the care of cancer-patients and the direction of the health services. There was a small possibility for blood and the opposition forced a vote of no confidence in the Minister. Despite speculation to the converse, the Minister survived and the only overt damage to government [...]

Bertie Ahern was talking to European Journalists today and outlined that the EU Treaty referendum will probably be held in early 2008. Sinn Fein have said they will lead a “robust” no campaign against the treaty, making them the only Irish party to commit to doing so and likely the only one with the Green [...]

The High Court today ruled in favour of the Mahon Tribunal and against the Irish Times in the Bertiegate case. The tribunal is seeking to have the paper and its journalist, Colm Keena, reveal the source of the material which sparked Bertiegate earlier this year in September 2006.
The planning tribunal sought the order against [...]

Bertie Ahern was delivering a speech to IBEC today where he admitted that since 2002 our competitive position has been considerable eroded by the strength of the Euro and price rises. He is still talking positive on the economy as it “enters a period of transition” but with consistent downgrading of expectations by major institutions [...]

UPDATE: The following letter was printed in the July 28th edition of The Irish Times denying links with Justin Barrett, and also denying - to the “almost certain knowledge” - his presence at the election centre count. Senator Mullen also denied the same on Newstalk 106 this morning. This to be welcomed. The original [...]

Ciaran Cuffe is surprised to learn that ballots for the Seanad election, for the TD/Senator/Cllr pool anyway, are not all that random.
Councillor Tom Kivlehan pointed out to me a curious aspect of the Senate Election. Each ballot is marked with a unique number on the back. Before I told him my number, he was able [...]

The Sunday Indo has been informed that Bertie Ahern will be proposing an increase in the number of junior ministries next week from 17 to 20. This is likely to accommodate the ambitions of the younger pups within the party who remain a bit peeved that senior ministries were unnecessarily given away in coalition.
The Tribune [...]

Following a vote in the Dail, O Donoghue was elected after the nomination of Ruairi Quinn  by the opposition forced a contest.
Result: 90 votes to 75 votes#
Incidentally, watch it live on Oireachtas.ie

The following is taken from my notebook. It was written on January 3rd this year, as I tried to make a list of problems to solve or salve. I haven’t changed any of it in the light of hindsight. It will be my last post on politics for a month.

The main opposition party is further [...]

We are always giving out about RTE, the State of Us was dire, Fair City risible, and Killinascully is a vacuous black hole of comedy which has all the laughter sucked out.
But what about RTE’s election coverage? It was supposed to be the most extensive coverage ever and sure enough the RTE TV studio [...]