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

Opposition is emerging from some Labour and FG TDs, Labour councillors to the prospect of a FG-Labour Coalition. Dublin MEP Proinsias de Rossa has said the party ‘should be prepared to go into Opposition’ if FG refuses to implement elements of Labour’s “Social Democratic Programme”. Former Enterprise, Trade and Employment and Energy and Natural Resources [...]

On a day headlined by party proposals for political reform, we have a guest post from Johnny Ryan, one of the founders of reformcard.com, a bit more background to which is here. Joe, my colleague, came to me three weeks ago with an idea that was too good – and too simple – not to [...]

This post stems from a discussion in the comments section under ‘All politics is local‘. We were comparing and contrasting the UK and Irish systems in terms of how rooted politicians must be within their local constituencies. I think there is significant difference between the two jurisdictions, to some degree due to FPTP (First Past [...]

Fianna Fail will nominate Cllr James Carroll – Louth County Councillor and parliamentary assisatnt to Margaret Conlon for one of the two Seanad seats to be filled at the forthcoming Seanad election. You might remember him from his scintillating blog posts during the local elections (he is also one of Suzy’s stepford candiates).

Some intersting tweets coming out of the Ard Fheis, it is definitely boiler plate stuff so far. Perhaps it is understandable that the bulk of the non televised event would be run of the mill stuff. As it moves toward a midday lull, the good news is bloggers are fed and watered. GAvin is posting [...]

We don’t discuss the topic of electoral reform here on Irish Election, so I thought I’d throw out some crazy ideas I’ve had on how we can reform the process to fix some of the endemic problems in our system of government.

A good while back I wrote here about trying to invert the common political process as we know it in Ireland whereby the candidate comes to your home and seeks to impress upon you what it is they are really, really interested in. My idea was along the lines of the public challenging the candidate [...]

Brian Cowen chose to use his Dail Anniversary speech to forge a link between the first Dail in 1919 and Ireland’s role in Europe. Under the wider topic of republicanism Cowen addressed partition, Europe and the wider economic downturn. It is a starting gun on raising the profile of the EU’s role in stabilising the [...]

I am just wondering if any of our readers/bloggers are heading along to the education protest at Leinster House tomorrow evening? If so – and you fancy doing some blogging from there – could you get in touch via the comments or the email to arrange something with us here? Thanks

A thread on boards.ie has been the source of some impressive citizen activism in the last week and it seems the campaign there is just getting started. As some people already know, Dublin City Council recently signed a deal with advertising group JCDecaux which would see a number of advertising panels erected on the city’s [...]

Thomas Byrne TD will be familiar to blog readers. The newly elected TD competed via blog and on the ground with Dominic Hannigan for votes last May. Anyhow, turns out his former speciality was solicitor specialising in EU law and in a public message on the blog he is inviting voters (I doubt he could be that picky [...]

So Brian Cowen continues to slowly dismantle the Bertie Ahern machine (on which note, anyone see a Fianna Fail ‘Yes’ poster with Cowen’s face on it?). The announcement that the construction industry wont be dining in Ballybrit will be greeted with delight in the offices of the Green Party and Finian McGrath as a potential [...]

I’m one of those people who hasn’t quite decided which way they’re going to vote on in the referendum. This is because I haven’t got around to reading all of the text I’m voting on yet. However, there’s one incredibly stupid argument the no camp is bandying about right now. It’s an argument that does [...]

Bloggers rejoice as John has this news over on his blog. Yet Rock the Vote are launching their campaign on May 19th (or so I’m told)! Well after the day and date of the vote has been decided on and less than a week before the closing of the voter registration date. What are they [...]

“To me, services for cancer patients are worse now than they were seven years ago in the midlands” … “I am writing out of a deep sense of despair and frustration…I have written to senior management about seven times in the last two years…outlining how we would deal with the problem…all to no avail” James [...]