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

Maire Geoghegan Quinn’s statement on her nomination to be Ireland’s next commissioner is below the fold.

The Tribune led with this in their business section yesterday – Anglo seek an additional €5.7bn if it is to resume lending to the ordinary public. This comes on top of the €4bn that has already been poured into the bank – a figure which we are looking to cut from our own budget this [...]

Fianna Fail will nominate Cllr James Carroll – Louth County Councillor and parliamentary assisatnt to Margaret Conlon for one of the two Seanad seats to be filled at the forthcoming Seanad election. You might remember him from his scintillating blog posts during the local elections (he is also one of Suzy’s stepford candiates).

Simon gave me a bell in work today. It seems he has been doing some research into rulings by the European Court of Justice and the EU Court of First Instance on asset management and the legalities surrounding the application of state aid. The beauty of working in journalism is you can spend time checking [...]

Warning 1: I am about to attempt mathematics. I am a journalist. Warning 2: I am about attempt electoral mathematics. I am a journalist. Warning 3: I know you can’t reduce voting preferences to maths, so don’t bring that up. Yes this is speculation for the sake of discussion. I am a journalist. – I [...]

As Cian points out, the Government’s majority is potentially down to the vote of one TD after Sligo-North Leitrim TDs Eamon Scanlon and Jimmy Devins resigned the Fianna Fáil whip today. The Government now has 83 votes, including Jim McDaid but not today’s two. It consists of 72 Fianna Fáil TDs, 6 Greens, two former [...]

Update: Official Press Release here. – In a decision sure to spark furious condemnation from “no” campaigners, the Broadcasting Commission of Ireland has announced new regulations on airtime set to grant the political-parties the vast majority of airtime during the campaign. Broadcasters are not required to allocate exactly the same amount of time to both [...]

Reading the Nama legislation is like staring at the sky on a clear winter’s night: before us a universe of bullet points – scattershot, random and infinite – each of them at first appearing whole and discreet but, when put to the lens, revealing a multitude of hidden meanings – just as the specs in [...]

Economics is not my forte, nor is it that of many of Irishelection’s stable of regular posters, yet it relates to much of our other content. I’m therefore going to curate the important commentary on the subject from elsewhere in the blogosphere and media and hopefully this post might provide a platform for an intelligent [...]

‘Ambitious action … to ensure the protection of our economy and the welfare of our people’ is how the Minister for Finance described the government’s draft legislation to establish NAMA, published earlier today. The full text of the Minister’s statement and the draft legislation can be found at www.finance.gov.ie The Dail will return on 16 [...]

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 [...]

The PD’s long goodbye is almost, nearly, complete, The Irish Times reports. They had what will likely be their last meeting yesterday. While the story itself is of little interest – we all knew it was on the way – the following section made me raise an eyebrow… Mr Grealish also expressed confidence that he, [...]

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 [...]

The final sticking plaster to put Humpty Dumpty Ireland together again is the Commission on Taxation report, due for presentation to the Minister for Finance at the end of the month. It’s the flip side of the coin to last week’s An Bord Snip Nua, or McCarthy Report, which sets out the agenda for fixing [...]

The Green Party will officially campaign for a Yes vote in the second Lisbon treaty referendum following a vote on the issue at their special party convention today. They didn’t vote on their position in Government, but they discussed it. The membership was asked to vote on whether they should support a No campaign, this [...]

It took some time to read and digest the full 300+ page Leas Cross investigation report. In the deluge of An Bord Snip coverage it made sense to leave a post until this morning. In the cold light of morning the report is worse than the initial impression my dulled senses took. There are a [...]