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

Credit to Vincent Browne: on what would otherwise be the silly season, and apparently on his holliers, he has been stirring the pot in his feud with Denis O’Brien via his column in the Irish Times (also on politico.ie). Today’s salvo is mostly devoted to DOB’s role at Independent Newspapers, but VB leaves out a [...]

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 [...]

The Irish Times has an interesting two part series on the predicament of the Irish unions.  Today’s installment provides a good insight into the minds of the union leadership and in so doing illustrates the challenge of relevance.  David Begg and Jack O’Connor now say that after 20 years of Social Partnership™, all they ever [...]

A spokesman for the Garda Representative Association speaking 0n Newstalk’s Lunchtime with Eamon Keane today said young gardai would be more  susceptible to bribery if they were paid less. Newstalk don’t podcast their shows so I can’t quote the GRA man directly, his basic argument was “cutting the pay of young guards would make bribes [...]

This might appear to be a little behind the curve, thanks to my first effort getting lost on the WP app. Anyway….. The response of Ceann Comhairle John O Donoghue to the reports of his extremely large expenses bills from his time in Arts, Sport and Tourism unveil a couple of things our erstwhile snippers [...]

So, ‘turns out that Denis O’Brien has done interviews with all the Sunday broadsheets, The Sunday Times was just the first to update its website, hence was the centre of all the talk online, including my earlier post. Yes, the O’Brien spin cycle has gone into overdrive. Apart from the (Murdoch-owned) Sunday Times’ interview mentioned [...]

Dan Boyle is on the war path again. A statement released through the Green Party communications office following his speech at the MacGill Summer School today said… Addressing the MacGill Summer School in Glenties, Co Donegal, the Green Party Finance spokesperson said progress required a prompt end to the culture of ‘No Blame – No [...]

A report in the motoring supplement of the Irish Times on Wednesday told of how The Dublin Port Tunnel will not be taking part in a major European tunnel safety assessment scheme because there was a “missing email between the National Roads Authority” and the group carrying out the report. It was headlined “No Record [...]

The full Leas Cross Inquiry report is online since 4:00 as the whole of Ireland is obsessed with the Bord Snip report (see our posts here). The report is embedded below the fold. As I read I will add analysis and keep the post updated. Feel free to wade in in the comments.

Apropos only 19 of 145 judges taking a pay cut, Niall Collins TD for Fianna Fail in Limerick wants a referendum: “This group of elite untouchables should be subjected to the regular procedures administering the pay of higher civil servants. In the modern day being protected by the Constitution is simply not good enough given [...]

Yesterday we had plans for apartment dwellers (can you canvass them?), plans for the unemployed (well 2,000 of the almost 500,000), plans for retraining those on part-time, opposition policies for Dublin and for small business. Calls for tax cuts and incentives – woo hoo for voters! You would think it is a general election. A [...]

Dug up from the RTE archives. Michael Woods trying to justify the indemnity deal on September 30, 2003. Yes Michael, it was done by the people of Ireland, not the religious orders. You gobshite. Full clip here.

The trial in Cork of Ted Cunningham, accused of laundering proceeds from the Northern Bank raid, heard detailed and sometimes bizarre testimony from the prosecution today — much of it drawn from transcripts of Garda interviews.  The most interesting twist is the return of the name of Phil Flynn, onetime chairman of Bank of Scotland’s [...]

Today its up to a once-off £30,000 which the Tribunal put to Ahern he received from developer Owen O Callaghan after a March 1994 meeting about the tax status of Quarryvale and Blanchardstown shopping centres. When he looks around at the empty press gallery and reads headlines of economic woe, he must think it was [...]

Is there a curse of Mahon? Added to the list of deceased on the witness lists comes today’s announcement that Albert Reynolds has “cognitive impairment” and cannot give evidence to the Tribunal. Albert has had a strange twilight to political career, having inadvertedly given his name to the standard libel defence in English law while [...]

The Drumcondra mafia, that is.  Can anyone keep track of the last two days’ Mahon revelations, let alone reconcile them with earlier testimony?  In particular, we have learned that it looks like Celia Larkin was never intended to be out of pocket, at least not anytime soon, on the loan that she got to buy [...]