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

The EU Observer reports
Poland is emerging as another potential problem for Lisbon Treaty ratification, with the office of the president - who has yet to sign off on the document - beginning to publicly argue that the EU pact is dead following the Irish No.
I think Sarkozy is going to be visiting Poland soon. [...]

[Edit: To say hello and welcome stumblers. Take a look around and tell us what you think.]
The prevailing mantra of Irish and European politicians, still reeling at the Lisbon ‘No’ vote in Ireland, is that we as a small nation cannot hold up the EU. Apparently, if 26 nations have said ‘Yes’ the breaks should [...]

Another excellent contribution to Open Democracy on the fallout from Lisbon yields a clear sighted analysis of just why so many people think the Lisbon campaign and fallout stinks;
But the Irish voters are not the only surrealists in the latest European psychodrama. A day before the vote, European political leaders had passionately argued that success [...]

Pardon the spelling if dickying is incorrect but I highlighted a post earlier today on Open Europe - as much for myself to return to later than anything else and yes those links in the sidebar do change!. They have a copy of the original Commission poll(PDF) that informed the awful reporting in the Independent [...]

Sunday Tribune Political Editor Shane Coleman reports that a second referendum on Lisbon is being considered. If its a runner, it will be seen and presented as a “de facto” referendum on our membership of the European Union.
The implications of a ‘no’ vote make it inevitable, political sources say, that ‘Lisbon II’ will boil down [...]

The first poll after the Lisbon result comes with little by way of surprise. The Sunday Business Post/Red C poll finds the Irish electorate looks unlikely to have engaged in a mass volte face with regard to the major parties after Lisbon.
Fianna Fail 40% (unchanged)
Fine Gael 25% (-3)

The Bloggingheads consortium does a chat on the Lisbon vote — prolific academic bloggers Henry Farrell and Dan Drezner. I’ve picked out an 8 minute clip where they get into some of the deeper international relations issues associated with EU integration. If nothing else, an example of one direction where blogging technology is [...]

So for Europe to fight Climate Change we need the Lisbon Treaty. Are so the story went.
Duncan Stewart, Spokesperson for the Environmental Campaign for the Alliance said: “Climate change is the most pressing challenge facing humanity. Ireland cannot solve this problem on our own, it is only as part of a strong and effective [...]

Well known County councillor Maurice Hickey gives his thoughts on Lisbon
The night before pollin’, a crowd of fellas in the pub in Teerawadra gathered around the pool table and divided themselves into teams of “Yes’s” and “No’s” . It was agreed to play for Lisbon; if the “yes’s” won they’d all vote “yes” and if [...]

David Miliband early today said
[Reports the British favour changing the treaty and forcing a second vote] were “not true” and said there were “relevant points” that the Irish government had to have time to address - as many of the issues raised by the “no campaign” in Ireland, such as abortion and conscription, “didn’t have [...]

Photo owned by azrainman (cc)
According to the The Times.
Initially, Mr Sarkozy was furious with the Irish. “They are bloody fools,” he told aides, according to le Canard Enchaîné weekly. “They have been stuffing their faces at Europe’s expense for years and now they dump us in the s***.”Initially, Mr Sarkozy was furious with the [...]

For reasons that I’m still trying to understand, but which are real and cannot be written off, there has been a significant growth in eurosceptic sentiment in Ireland. But wait, I don’t mean that euroscepticism is suddenly widespread and deep. Nor that it was the key factor in the recent outcome. No, but it has [...]

Conor and Richard  have spent a lot of time deconstructing the poll “data” that has been circulating around the two major broadsheets in the past few days. Not alone does the data not tally in some cases (under-15s voting?, 105% of the electorate giving a response?) it is still not publicly available to peruse days after [...]

I posted after Friday’s results were finalised that Enda Kenny could well find himself in the most precarious position of the three major party leaders. Kenny has increasingly bolshie elements within the party, a few more years in opposition and the pressure of maintaining progress next year to deal with and no foreign negotiations to [...]

Personnally I have a lot of respect for the EU Parliamentarians but sometimes you have to dispare.  Take this exchange Via EU Observer.
“You ignore the voters, you are destroying democracy, and you have shown that you will stop at nothing,” said Nigel Farage, head of the UK Independence Party, accusing mainstream politicians of creating a [...]

Much of the talk around the result of the Lisbon Treaty is how Ireland is under pressure to sort it out. But we are not the only ones.
No pressure should be exerted on the Czech Republic to force it to quickly ratify the Lisbon treaty, Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek (senior ruling Civic Democrats, ODS) [...]