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

Warning: This thread will be constantly updated by various writers as details emerge. Readers are free to point out anything we’ve missed in the comments section and we’ll subsume them into the post. It is written somewhat on-the-fly, so apologies for potentially poor English, we post first then edit. – The Irish Times and Independent [...]

Third level fees have weaseled their way back onto the news agenda. On Tuesday Minister of Education, Batt O’Keefe submitted documents to cabinet detailing the range of options available to Government for abolishing the ‘free fees’ regime. See the Indo report, or The Irish Times for more newsy information. As the Indo says, it is [...]

By pushing through this Blasphemy provision, Dermot Ahern is advertising himself as the Leadership Candidate most likely to deliver on Abortion. When the time comes, that impression is likely to translate into a healthy dollop of organised and well-funded support being brought to bear on backbenchers.

Exchanges between the TEEU’s Eamon Devoy and the CIF’s Tom Parlon became heated on the Pat Kenny show this morning. Devoy taunted Parlon that the TEEU have “closed down all your businesses and they won’t open again until we say so,” or words to that effect, which was enough to make Kenny draw in his [...]

Via: EXTRA TIME should be given for Dáil debate of tough new powers to be given to the Garda Síochána and Director of Public Prosecutions, the Green Party has said. But it will not insist that Minister for Justice Dermot Ahern complies.

When I put the headline on this post, I thought, cheekily, that I could have gotten away with just saying Journalism in Ireland: Waste of Time. It would still be a launch pad for a viable post: over the last number of years, journalism in Ireland hasn’t been a pretty place. The big broadsheets have [...]

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Much of page 12 in today’s Irish Times is given to follow-up articles on yesterday’s conference on political reform. Like most conferences, it had its good parts and… I spent the day in a bunker-like lecture hall deep in the bowels TCD’s Arts Block listening to highly-informed journalists and academics. The vast majority of the speakers were either insightful, educational [...]

So yeah, the facebook wall of John McGuirk, Libertas’ Irish press officer is below. I said Libertas was an organisational shambles last week, the downfall will reflect exactly why. Expect law suits to be splattered all over the place (edit: in fact, they already are being thrown about, a letter was sent by Simons’s solicitor to [...]

With a week to digest the election results, the Green Party might be credited with an emerging strategy to take into their negotiations for a renewed programme for government and, in theory at least, the second part of the process of government for however long it lasts. It was assessed here and elsewhere that the [...]

“Tabloid politics” was how Mary O’Rourke described the Dail Debate on the Confidence Motion. And she was right. There was no policy discussion of merit – apart from Brian Lenihan‘s effort – about where we are going and what we need to do to get there. Insults were liberally traded on all sides. Enda Kenny [...]

In Dublin the Greens were wiped off the map in the local elections. The result truly was horrific. There is no way to hide the fact that support for the party collapsed – pretty much dropped by about 50%. But I noticed two things that I think were relevant in the decline. First is the [...]

Rather subdued around the count centre in the RDS at present. The media room is yet to fill up – heads from all the main outlets are kicking about though, sticking their noses into the tally centres and such. It’s a time for mingling for the press corps, get the pulse and such. I was [...]