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

I thought it couldn’t get worse. I was wrong. And now, due to Eoghan Harris, we see the Coolacrease situation become elevated to a semi-political issue, hence my posting this to Irish Election as well as the Cedar Lounge Revolution.
Eoghan Harris in today’s Sunday independent writes about Coolacrease (Tom McGurk also writes about it sensibly [...]

Bertie gave the Bodenstown oration today and used it as an opportunity to return to the legacy issue theme of turning Fianna Fail into a 32-county party. He sought to reassure unionists that Fianna Fail will not be a sectarian influence of proponent of narrow nationalism as it seeks to move North.

So, what to make of the news yesterday about Fianna Fáil exploring the ‘idea of advancing itself as a political party in the North’? Certainly it has considerable support amongst many FF members. But the more one examines the idea the less feasible it becomes.

Over on Orga Sinn Fein’s blog they have released details of
The Shoot to Kill 25th Anniversary Committee has launched a new website. This site has been launched as part of a series of events and activity to commemorate the events of 1982; when 6 unarmed men were murdered by the RUC.
Now I know this is [...]

A Big Day in the North…or so Black Grape had it… back in 1995. So, what’s up next week? Why, the British-Irish Council meet, and as Gerry Moriarty writes in yesterdays Irish Times:
First Minister the Rev Ian Paisley and Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness are scheduled to greet Gordon Brown at Parliament Buildings, Stormont, on [...]

From IOL.
The Irish Government today faced further calls to rejoin the Commonwealth.Following appeals in the North’s Assembly yesterday for Ireland to rejoin the international organisation headed by the Queen after 58 years, the secretary general of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association (CPA) Dr William Shija, said the time had come for Ireland to embrace the diversity [...]

From Reuters last night, Bertie speaking to the Council on Foreign Relations suggested a mechanism not unlike South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission may be necessary to secure progress in community relations up North.
 ”I think we have to find some mechanism. … Otherwise it will never come to an end,” Ahern said. One commission [...]

… for the election. Michael O’Neill is set for release on May 17th.

As always, I struggle with a feeling that I’m somehow not entitled to stick my toe into the murky waters that comprises the political landscape in the six counties because I have no idea what the “sit-EE-ation” is really like up there.
Of course, that will never stop me chucking in my two cents’ worth anyway!
The [...]

I am not sure whether to be amused or nervous about this. One of the Republican Sinn Fein Limerick posse are considering standing as an “abstentionist” member of Dail Eireann.
That is right, he would collect a TD’s salary, but not turn up for work. He would just be changing the place where he [...]

There is that old saying I like. No Tax without representation. But despite the normal interpretation there is another way you can read it. No representation without tax. Basically why should people have a say in how we run our country if they don’t have any input to it or dependence on it. Now I [...]

Strange, reading this earlier today. The policing issue has clearly become crucial to the further implementation of the Good Friday Agreement in it’s current form. And yet the news emanating from both Sinn Féin and the Democratic Unionist Party is far from good.
Firstly, and this is hardly a surprise, I entirely support the GFA and [...]

It seems that Sinn Fein in Northern Ireland is having a hard time convincing its people to accept policing, with reports of some IRA members aligning themselves to so-called dissident Republicans with a view to derailing the peace process, perhaps even by targeting the Sinn Fein top-brass themselves.
With all this going on in Northern Ireland, [...]

I’m wondering if I was the only one this morning who felt that the Archbishop Brady/Dr. Paisley meeting earlier today might well be a harbinger of an unintended consequence of the Peace Process. Hearing Archbishop Brady talking about the central position of “marriage and the family” and “faith-based” education struck me as rather intriguing. After [...]

Okay, away from the hub-bub about Bertie and Manchester and who paid what when and to whom let’s calm ourselves and look at a counterfactual that, while having relatively little bearing on the current state of affairs, may at least explicate some of the dynamics of contemporary Irish political parties as they rush headlong to [...]