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

Video from yesterday’s Save Our Slots Rally
I am unable to embed them here, but they can be found at the below link
Link.
Update Simon. Video added below

There was a lively atmosphere on O’Connell Street in Limerick today with a red army again packing the street. Today rather than rugby, it was the issue of Shannon and its slots that were the main event. The press are pulling their punches at the moment but the only FF TD, John Creegan, on the [...]

Mary Harney was quoted in the Independent today on her future as party leader and when she would like to have the job handed over to her successor;
“Obviously I will continue to assist the party in any way I can. But hopefully the party can now put a mechanism to have a leader in place [...]

RTE are reporting that Amgen has put their plans for a factory/facility and an additional 1,100 jobs in Cork have been put on hold indefinitely. Rumours had been around Cork for a while that this was the case but as recently as last month the company were simply saying their would be a delay in [...]

The departments of an Taoiseach and transport have made available the report of senior officials on the Shannon-Heathrow route along with a press release from the government  summarising the report and outlining next steps.  The press release is the usual blather and jargon but the detailed report is actually a little more substantive, indicating that [...]

I believe one motion on Shannon has been defeated by 1 vote. 68 to 67.  Watch or listen live.

This is according to people talking to Mulley from CUH. In addition to cutting back on cleaning in the hospital and charging staff for parking, the source says they are freezing hiring until December or January not September as implied by the HSE in their early October review.
In order to cut down on costs, [...]

It’s probably not on your regular websurfing list but the website of the Irish Stock Exchange has been very lively recently, as seemingly arcane company announcements can occasionally pertain to fallout from the US subprime mortgage crisis.  But sitting there today is Ryanair’s formal notification to the exchange that it is seeking an EGM, along [...]

Green Ink

A fairly comprehensive statement today from the up-to-now quiet Enda Kenny on SNN-LHR. Perhaps some of the time was spent reconciling the position that FG will now adopt with their non-opposition to the Aer Lingus privatization (although they had complaints at the time about how it was managed). A few interesting things in [...]

Here’s the text of the (hastily written?) press release from the Department of Transport following the Cabinet meeting on Shannon-Heathrow today.  The statement is mostly the familiar litany from the government and avoids the issue of the call for an Aer Lingus EGM or the purpose of the 25 percent shareholding.  But there might be [...]

Here’s an issue that has surfaced briefly at various times in the Shannon-Heathrow-Belfast dispute and has now been explicitly raised by IMPACT: is Belfast in Ireland?  We can probably all recall instances where one of the many usages for the two jurisdictions on the island has had a similar impact as fingernails being drawn across a [...]

Aer Lingus pilots have called of the strike after the two sides agreed to head to the Labour Relations Commission. Good news for travellers no matter what.  
Also almost a month into the Shannon - LHR issue the Taoiseach takes his head from the Kenmare air to enter the fray. Its interesting to see the teflon tactics used again despite [...]

After drifting a little bit the SNN-LHR controversy and the related issue of the Aer Lingus strike are heating up again this evening.   The latest non-Bertie non-Dempsey spokesperson for the government is Mary Hanafin — perhaps she was the only one around given the Leaving Cert results.  And the employee trust has spoken up.  This [...]

A dog that hadn’t barked up to now — Aer Lingus staff — is barking. Tonight brings news of a 48 hour strike by pilots next week, not in protest against the Shannon withdrawal per se, but the fact that new Belfast base is hiring pilots outside the collective bargaining contract. This arises from the [...]

An absolutely atrocious job by the RTE Radio News at One today. Dermot Ahern, in the course of an interview about Irish prisoners overseas, was asked (at about the 3:30 mark in his interview) about the Shannon-Heathrow route removal. In his response he (1) referred to the Irish Aid decentralisation to Shannon as [...]