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

Perhaps in an attempt at balance, however it seems more like a dose of split-personality the Irish Times delivers the thousandth installment of the “nuclear option” saga. The softening up of public opinion for a second vote on Lisbon continues alongside the much-decried “soothing noises” of Michael Martin and others in Cabinet. Again today Stephen [...]

The Telegraph are saying this is the likely date for our second referendum on the Lisbon Treaty. I must say, I like the name of the briefing paper: The Solution to the Irish Problem

A tiny autonomous archipelago off Finland could soon add to the EU’s Lisbon Treaty woes…BBC That isnt the kind of thing you expect to read everyday on the BBC website – or perhaps it is. Anyway it seems that not alone can the Irish do damage to the treaty by effectively killing it. A small [...]

It has been called “unhelpful” and “unwise” however I am not sure what the reasoning for that is. Dick Roche suggested that we may well have a second referendum on Lisbon as a means to keep us at the heart of Europe. A SECOND referendum on the Lisbon Treaty would “ultimately” be required and ratifying [...]

Sarkozy is a genius. See people think he is for the Lisbon Treaty but is in fact against it. Yes Irish Election can reveal that he is purposely trying to destroy the EU. Take his latest idea. The president of France, the current holder of the European Union’s rotating presidency, has floated the scheme as [...]

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 [...]

Its the same as number 1 and many subsequent solutions, the Indo has the leaked idea (is it really news though? – its been around for ages as the only solution). It beats the deadlines but only just. THE guarantee of holding on to a European Commissioner will be the carrot for a ‘Yes’ vote [...]

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 [...]

It has been noted in a few places over the weekend that the grand alliance on Europe, the three main parties plus the Greens and PDs, was beginning to take some strain. Yesterday’s poll released by Open Europe seems to provide further evidence of that strain. Labour appear to be distancing themselves from any “Tallaght [...]

The Sleep of Sarkozy produces Sarkozy…

Usually not a fan, but Diarmaid Ferriter‘s in The Examiner today is well worth the read. Some of the end-of-term report cards will make for sorry reading, with the exception perhaps of the Green party leader, John Gormley, who has made the transition from the opposition benches to cabinet with singular ease and who is [...]

It may be a catchy means of getting around the 9 and 15 month deadlines that seem to be naturally occuring to the EU leadership, but rerunning Lisbon next June in conjunction with European Parliament and Local elections has been ruled out by most parties. Not least because another ‘no’ vote could seep over into [...]

The following is my translation of an article in today’s Le Monde about proposals to get another Irish referendum. It is quite interesting in the kind of manoevering it reveals and also there is an interesting little comment at the end about the way the commission is evolving into something less than desireable. The article [...]

I got this email from Georg Pichler of rigardi.org and I thought I would pass it on. As you might have heard the governmenting parties, Social Democrats (SPOE) and Conservatives (OEVP) have decided to end their coalition. After 1 1/2 years of constant quarrel and hardly any progress, the Social Democrats have decided to switch [...]

BBC Radio 4′s Today in Parliament last night did a segment on Nicolas Sarkozy’s speech to the European Parliament in which he outlined the agenda of the French EU Council Presidency.  It begins 19 minutes into the program (Listen again/download).   Included in the post-speech interviews is Kathy Sinnott MEP, who says that she has offered [...]

The No Campaign failed to make the Abortion issue a major reason to vote no. But they certainly convinced the rest of Europe again. And yet again we have another person rather then reading the Eu-barometer results but let there own bias dictate their views. Sylvie Goulard, the president of the French section of the [...]