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

Update: Head office must have been worried for the press released the result this evening. It is a blow for any who may have wished to see a return of the Spring dynasty to this particular fold as Senator Alan Kelly took the nomination for Labour candidate for MEP in the South. It was widely [...]

Irishelection.com is delighted to announce ‘Green Ink’s Week‘ a new feature to the site where cartoon and blogging legend Green Ink posts his reflections on the week. Each Friday the exclusive cartoon will be posted to the front page of irishelection.com by the artist presently known as Green Ink (but aims for a future title [...]

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 basking [...]

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 their [...]

The news that the ESB is to seek a 20pc price hike will if granted, drive the average annual bill up to a staggering €1,100. It is up to the Commission for Energy Regulation to sanction all such rises. Before it does so, it had better think hard about the hardship they could bring and [...]

A thread on boards.ie has been the source of some impressive citizen activism in the last week and it seems the campaign there is just getting started.
As some people already know, Dublin City Council recently signed a deal with advertising group JCDecaux which would see a number of advertising panels erected on the city’s streets [...]

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 [...]

If Ireland took the most democratic route to ratification, arguably Poland did the opposite. The parliament elected by the people voted to ratify the Lisbon Treaty. But ratification could not procede because a single person was against it - their President. The President says he won’t sign because the Irish voted No. That cannot be [...]

So the Polish President says he will not sign.
Polish president Lech Kaczynski has said he will not sign the EU’s Lisbon Treaty, saying it was pointless after Irish voters rejected it in a referendum last month.
“For the moment, the question of the treaty is pointless,” Mr Kaczynski was quoted as saying in the online version [...]

Irish Economic Growth contraction. From Irish Times
Economic growth in the Republic shrank by 1.5 per cent between January and March this year, according to data released by the Central Statistics Office this morning.
Growth rates recorded for the Republic during the first quarter 2008 showed that Gross Domestic Product (GDP) contracted by 1.5 per cent, [...]

This caused a Storm in Sweden recently.
Swedish media have erroneously reported that the EU plans to register and bill all bloggers, setting off a firestorm of reaction in the country.
And there is a lesson to all of us in the responsibility of the media there. But this part caught my eye.
Speaking to the EUobserver, Ms [...]

I am not sure if this is Austria playing hard ball with Brussels but Austrian chancellor, Alfred Gusenbauer has said that if the Treaty text is changed for Ireland then Austria would have a referendum as well.
Also
Hannes Swoboda, vice-president of the Socialists in the EU assembly, told Der Standard newspaper: “It is not possible [...]