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

Clearly picking up from the political ether that the Mahon Tribunal report is coming out next week, Micheál Martin wants it to be known (via the Irish Times) that at least after the fact, there’s a new sheriff in town: There is a view within Fianna Fáil that if the leader is not seen to [...]

BBC Radio 4 with another scoop that should probably have been dug up by an Irish media outlet first.  The Manx2 crash at Cork Airport with the plane coming from Belfast.  The “airline’s” response to all queries — nothing to do us, sorry, we only sold the tickets.  A question for regulators both sides of the [...]

With the trilogy of Lenihan-era reports into Ireland’s financial collapse now completed (Regling-Watson, Honohan, and now Nyberg), there is now a lot of good information from which to draw.  But if you were hoping that completion of the trilogy meant something on the order of Return of the Jedi in terms of closure, you’d be [...]

At this pace of news dumps, we’re going to need a bigger Dumpster.  Today it’s the report into why Brian Lenihan misled Chris Andrews in response to his parliamentary question about the payment of bonuses at Bank of Ireland (the same question triggered the AIB bonus row).  First, a digression.   Let’s suppose you were considering [...]

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 [...]

Bertie Ahern used a bit of Yeats (the municipal gallery poem) in his retirement speech to the O’Donovan Rossa cumann this evening.  The latter-years Yeats liked to tour through the memories and link them and and so it’s not surprising that there were echoes of Bertie’s more difficult moments even in the sanctuary of the [...]

The AIB bonus payment row may be shaking loose some of the practices of the calcified Irish legal-political complex.  The government at first appeared to be in its standard legal paralysis mode when it comes to doing something it doesn’t want to do — claiming that legal advice meant it had no ability to revisit [...]

Good.  Then you’ve completed Step 1 on page 15 of the Health Services National Partnership Forum Tools For Change Through Partnership — “Identify the Problem”.   And going by yet another Friday news dump, it sounds like if you got to Step 6 — “Review the Outcome” — everyone involved got a junket to New York.  [...]

Peter Sutherland — former board member of RBS, Goldman Sachs, and BP — calls for more pay cuts on the day that the Dept of Finance shows his 2009 pension from his Attorney General stint at €52,632.32.  It also appears that no former AG did the increasingly common 10 percent pension surrender in 2009.   It’s [...]

Minister engages in excessive expenditure for private jet citing pressures of schedule and lack of commercial options to attend an event.  Resulting public outcry causes minister to resign before he is sacked. It’s France, last month, when the aid minister Alain Joyandet chartered a jet to go a donors conference for Haiti — conveniently located [...]

A little Saturday puzzler.  One likes to believe that the annual report of a financial organisation provides a somewhat comprehensive description of its activities and accounts.  With that in mind, consider the following: Where in the 2009 annual report of the Central Bank of Ireland is there a discussion of its approximately €10 billion loan [...]

As we all wait out the diplay of Fine Gael self-indulgence that would shame even the most vain World Cup WAG, it’s worth recalling that there are several sleeper stories floating around that could yet shed further light on our present predicament.  Take in particular the missing millions that the HSE says went to SIPTU [...]

Friday evening. Bank holiday weekend.  What better time for a document dump? We are now much closer to the “nearly 200″ figure for deaths of young people in some form of care/interaction that initially circulated in the media.  Not least because the 151 doesn’t include the earlier 37.   Apparently the post-18 years of age transition [...]