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

On a day headlined by party proposals for political reform, we have a guest post from Johnny Ryan, one of the founders of reformcard.com, a bit more background to which is here. Joe, my colleague, came to me three weeks ago with an idea that was too good – and too simple – not to [...]

Edit at 14:00The full manifesto is available here. It is really hard to read the Irish Times report on today’s Fianna Fail manifesto launch and avoid thinking three, cynical thoughts. 1) All well and good, but you were in power for the last 13 years. Whither the new found reform zeal? 2) The Green Party [...]

Lest we continue to get distracted by polls and process, it is definitely noteworthy to point readers to the health policy announced today by Fine Gael. The policy, headlined as abolishing the HSE, reads like a step-by-step dismantling of the public-private divide to replace it with a system of private insurance and universal coverage, semi-private [...]

As Debategate hogs the limelight for yet another day and FG scrambles to defend Enda’s bizarre intransigence on taking part, the other parties have been happy to sit back and let the attention focus on this non-issue issue. FF released 5 (!) press releases about it in the past 24 hours, with Michéal Martin saying [...]

Via Neil Ward on Twitter SBP/Red C tomorrow: Change figures are from midweek RedC for Paddy Power. FG 35 (-2), Lab 22 (+3), FF 17 (-1), SF 13 (+1), Green 2 (-1), Other 11 (n/c) The bands are static for all major parties after 4 polls in the past 7 days.

The kindest thing that can be said about today, the second full day of election campaigning, is that everything passed off smoothly. No-one rocked the boat. There were no major changes in party results in the latest poll. The parties focused on heavily stage-managed events – policy launches, charity events, walkabouts – while candidates wrestled [...]

I hope this irregular piece can become more regular over the campaign. If readers have local polling data, please email it to us irishelection@gmail.com or tweet us @irishelection.

Much is made of the under-representation of women in the Dail and many people have been calling for gender quotas to be brought in. However little consideration is given to what the imposition of quotas mean. What signal do they send out.So first lets look at the claim that women are under-represented in the Dail. [...]

As the dissolution of the Dail nears, many leaders took the opportunity today to outline their focus for the campaign ahead. While the debate issue has put Enda Kenny on the backfoot at a national level, within the party today he spoke to all of Fine Gael’s #GE11 candidates and delivered a speech outlining the [...]

Who among us has forgotten the tearful scene at the end of Terminator 2 when everyone still standing realizes that although that awful T-1000 Terminator is dead, the good Terminator (Arnie) points out that he is technology from the future and therefore must destroy himself to leave no trace?  So he lowers himself into the [...]

  “They’ve changed the arrangements that apply to coalition governments” … Brian Cowen on the Greens just now on Six One.  Apparently there’s an unwritten constitution for such governments.  His tone of lecturing the Greens on how government works is not going to go down well.   He is also mingling his roles of Taoiseach and [...]

From the start, there have been questions about the government’s number10.gov.uk style website,  merrionstreet.ie.   Despite the presence of special advisers, media affairs units, and handlers in government offices, there’s supposed to be a clear line between political boosterism and the provision of taxpayer-financed official information.  Yet within an hour of the Taoiseach’s unscheduled Thursday statement [...]

Bunreacht na hEireann Article 15.10 – Each House shall make its own rules and standing orders, with power to attach penalties for their infringement, and shall have power to ensure freedom of debate, to protect its official documents and the private papers of its members, and to protect itself and its members against any person [...]

It’s going to be a long weekend for Brian Cowen so this will have to be a frequently updated post.  Let’s start with the seemingly damaging Irish Times story that Anglo lobbied Central Bank director and Druid’s Glen diner Alan Gray the day before the guarantee – Anglo had sought a €1.5 billion short-term loan [...]

If you’re old enough, or if you like those old detective shows, you’ll remember the time in every episode when Detective Columbo would have reassured his prime suspect that he was not the prime suspect, step out the door, and then pop back in with a jarring “just one more thing”.   Yesterday in the Dail, [...]

Brian Cowen – The continuing attempt to suggest that the Government’s approach to the affairs of Anglo Irish Bank was influenced by political or any inappropriate considerations is utterly without foundation. The facts in this instance demonstrate that as do the findings of the independent review carried out by Professor Honohan which similarly found that [...]