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

Below the fold, the text of Article 136 from the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU), which is the consolidated set of treaties relating to the EU; the context of Article 136 itself originated with Lisbon.  This Article is extremely important because the European Commission is making it the legal basis of [...]

The Irish Times and RTE say that a team from KPMG Netherlands office is doing an assessment of Anglo Irish Bank’s options, with one option apparently being a wind down.  At some point we’ll have to do a complete list of Brian Lenihan’s statements about Anglo Irish over the last 14 months, but it has [...]

The EU Commission has just published a special survey on how Irish citizens voted in the second Irish Lisbon Treaty Referendum and why. Check it out here (PDF). Headline findings below the fold.

Maire Geoghegan Quinn’s statement on her nomination to be Ireland’s next commissioner is below the fold.

While I work on a bigger post here’s just a few little facts on how the run-up to the next Lisbon Treaty referendum is played: The Irish government removes legislation that made for equal airtime for both sides of the debate. The Irish government enters into a contract with a PR firm to handle publicity [...]

You’d swear Lisbon wasn’t on the cards. It’s not in the papers. I read Saturday’s Irish Times, it has one Lisbon article on page 8. Today’s Sunday Business Post has nothing. Looking at their website, The Sunday Times has a piece about the spending involved from private groups – not the politics though. The Tribune [...]

This is very interesting, last time out we had Libertas as the great private sector campaign with money at its disposal – now it looks like the Yes side will be the ones rolling in private dosh as Intel Chief Exec in Ireland Jim O’Hara signalled the intent of big business here to get behind [...]

With the blurb coming from the “yes-camp” and the very regretful stepping back by Declan Ganley (at least he kept his promise) one might think that it is the Irish “No to Lisbon” campaigners against the EU. Fortunately that isn’t true. In the run-up to the recent EU elections I got talking on Twitter with [...]

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 [...]

In Evert’s recent post on the Lisbon Treaty he finished on a point that jarred me. He ended the post with the following There is no (real) need to expand the powers of the EU government and limit those of the individual national governments. Now nothing in the EU limits the work of the national [...]

The Irish political parties seem to be set on advising the Irish people to go begging to the EU to be please “let in”. The number of politicians and public figures who have spoken out recently about the “need to be part of Europe” has multiplied at an astonishing rate. All and sundry seem to [...]

Minister for Foreign Affairs Micheal Martin is in charge of the Lisbon II campaign.  With summer schools apparently forming the main forum for policy debate with the Dail in recess, he was perhaps giving us a preview of what the Yes campaign will look like in this evening’s remarks to the MacGill event.  Writing as [...]

The Green Party will officially campaign for a Yes vote in the second Lisbon treaty referendum following a vote on the issue at their special party convention today. They didn’t vote on their position in Government, but they discussed it. The membership was asked to vote on whether they should support a No campaign, this [...]

The Lisbon treaty bill has been published, as Stephen revealed earlier, with the Oireachtas set to deal with in between 11.00am and 11.00pm on Wednesday (all stages). There is grumbling that it is hardly the way to kick off the campaign, which might be a fair point – as a full debate lets the yes [...]

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. [...]

According the Irish Times the date for Lisbon II will be set for Friday October 2nd. It’s not a weekend and it would be preferable to have this vote at a time that suits many people. Nonetheless this is the date we have.