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

Bertie-hooray, Enda & Eamon-boo. Below is the Fianna Fail response to the gains it has seen in the Irish Times and Sunday Business Post over the week. As you can see, it is thrilled with its performance but it strikes me that this is also a boot that they have been waiting to apply for [...]

Eamon Ryan was on RTE this morning and said that it is time for a full debate on the merits of nuclear power in Ireland. In light of the decision which seems to be coming today in the UK to begin upgrading their nuclear power generators. A debate which has been called for a while [...]

Bord Pleanala has laid a bed of nails for Minister Gormley. They have granted permission for the Poolbeg incinerator to go ahead with a capacity of 600,000. The inspector report recommended that the incinerator should only have a capacity of 500,00 tonnes at the most but DCC want the 600,000 to make up the shortfall [...]

There was a mixed report on jobs growth and unemployment from the CSO’s Quarterly Household Survey today.. The growth in jobs is around 3.3% which is very healthy in an EU state but considerably slower than at many points in the last five years. Similarly with unemployment at 4.7% it has risen over the last [...]

Simon Coveney in today’s Examiner following the not so wonderful RTE expose on high-society drug use.; “It’s a running joke on the corridors of Leinster House: which minister is the cocaine user. Mr Ahern needs to sort it out.” An answer is ready made, drug test Dail Eireann. Rather than continue with the farcical behaviour [...]

Well not quite, but it is hard not to think it after Bertie was talking this afternoon about ‘wage restraint‘ and ‘reaslistic approaches‘ to financial policy. It is however that time again, the two-year post-election-win belt tightening budget.

In a case that could prove very interesting, Thomas ‘Slab’ Murphy has had over £1.5 million worth of assets frozen and the Times Reports that there may well be £15 million worth of bills accruing. ‘Slab’ Murphy is a huge figure on the Republican landscape, described by Liam Clarke in the Times as “Chief of [...]

It seems a happy coincidence that last week John Gormley announced national capacity for waste incineration in 2016 would be 400,000 tonnes and only two plants and today An Bord Pleanala give Indaver permission to increase the capacity of the Meath project and bring the capacity of their two plants in Cork and Meath up [...]

The examiner has an interview this morning wit former TD and now senator Fiona o Malley. She suggests that Harney will have stepped down as leader by early next year. She is quoted as relishing the role of leadin the PDs should the committe investigating the rules rule in her favour. As a senator she [...]

Speaking at the launch of the Merchants Quay Ireland 2006 report, Junior Minister for Drug Strategy Pat Carey suggested the government may look at implementing a needle exchange programme nationally. The programme seems prompted by the volume which the smaller Merchants Quay project deals with. Last year nearly 40,000 visits to the programme were logged [...]

Flynn: ‘I never believed I did anything wrong’ Insight into the people of Mayo’s strange dependence on the Flynn can be found in the following film.

FF and Greens still in contact

Brian O’Neill of Sportsspread.com told Slugger today that they have a seen a huge shift in money over the weekend in the political spread market. In just three days, Fianna Fail have had a surge in money, moving them from a predicted 63 seats up to 70. In the same period, Fine Gael and Labour [...]

(Originally posted on AdamMaguire.com) I’ve had more than a passing interest in politics for many years now and I’ve always believed that young people need to engage and be engaged in the larger political discourse. I believe that the main instrument of youth participation within Ireland’s political parties, the youth wing, is actually counter-intuitive and [...]

Irish Anarchist Organistion, the Workers Solidarity Movement, today launched a campaign to encourage public understanding of our democratic system in the run up to the general election. The campaign will focus on groups such as young people, the working class and ethnic minorities, who have a history of high rates of abstention. The campaign launched [...]

I set out tonight to focus in on blogs from left-wing candiates, but first a quick mention of Thomas Byrne, FF candidate for Meath East, who got into a bit of a tizz with Mary Hanafin over the issue of education and autism. His comments were reported in the Drogheda Indo, while Thomas gets to [...]