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

Micheál Martin as Minister for Health & Children, in the Dail on 25 October 2001 to push through the legislation for the 25th Amendment to the Constitution – The purpose of the Twenty-fifth Amendment of the Constitution (Protection of Human Life in Pregnancy) Bill is to provide a secure and effective constitutional basis for a [...]

On 12 October 2012, a process by which an opinion column written by opinion columnist Kevin Myers on the opinion pages of the Irish Independent newspaper had been hauled before Ireland’s statutory Press Ombudsman came to an end. The Press Ombudsman ruled that opinion columnist Kevin Myers had used his opinion column on the opinion [...]

Obviously there are quite a few places where the result is being discussed but for the sake of completeness we’ll open a thread here. I was struck just now to see on RTE Norah Casey (being interviewed by Miriam along with Mary Lou) to say that we need a convene a new style of think [...]

It’s an interesting day on the Irish Times opinion page as Vincent Browne and Terence McDonough set out the anti-Yes position on the fiscal treaty, specifically regarding whether Ireland will still have recourse to the IMF outside the European Stability Mechanism. It’s clear that technically, as an IMF member country, it will. But leave aside [...]

Draghi, not Rosenstock. Here’s the President of the European Central Bank in an interview with the Wall Street Journal discussing the fiscal compact: Many things have happened in Europe in the last year and a half. You have different countries that have different initial conditions–high debt, low growth countries and countries with low debt and [...]

Big things are happening in a big week for Irish and European politics and, let’s be honest, most of us don’t really understand what’s happening, or why. The budget to be unveiled today and tomorrow will need to cut spending and increase taxes because of the banks, or something. The European summit being held on Friday will save [...]

The Irish Dail has one major failing; parish pump politics. There are a couple of theories as to why, but it seems the only national level views are to be found in the cabinet, the shadow cabinet and the Seanad. And that scope is why its needed. Its problems (and its expense) is why the [...]

Pat Cox yesterday morning delivered a speech down the country making plain the case for Europe. Of course Cox is running hard with his Ireland for Europe grouping trying to get some traction on the Yes side for Lisbon II as well as getting a credible claim in for credit at the other end. Many [...]

We can see already that there are groups with a multitude of colours sharpening swords for the impending Battle for Lisbon. This time though it appears it will be a battle not of parties but of people. The Yes side has conscripted an array of celebrities to their army including Bill Cullen, Eimear Quinn (Of Eurovision fame, apparently) and [...]

Stephen Spillane has scooped everyone with the news that the bill laying out the Lisbon 2 referendum will be published today and the Referendum Commission will follow on the heels once the bill passes the Oireachtas. From his post: Commission will aim to inform voters of the issue as well as encourage people to vote. [...]

So the new Lisbon deal will be formally agreed with our EU colleagues over the next couple of days.  The media coverage is going be particularly unreliable on this one, because the line to the media from Brian Cowen and Micheal Martin will be to show their efforts in extracting every possible concession and driving [...]

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.

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 [...]

Stephen Collin‘s story in the Irish Times today is one of those ones that feeds into a zeitgeist. Political leaders who have let the Social Partnership talks slip, are in charge of an economic slowdown and on 13 weeks of summer holidays receive their final pay increase today. TDs WILL receive a pay rise of [...]

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 group with financial interests [...]

The WTO talks are a little like the Tribunals. For the most part, progress is confined to a tiny box on page 8 of the Irish Times or Indo unless the leading lights drag it up the agenda. While both are meaningful in themselves and have great symbolic (on the perception of cleansing politics or [...]