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

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 [...]

Opposition is emerging from some Labour and FG TDs, Labour councillors to the prospect of a FG-Labour Coalition. Dublin MEP Proinsias de Rossa has said the party ‘should be prepared to go into Opposition’ if FG refuses to implement elements of Labour’s “Social Democratic Programme”. Former Enterprise, Trade and Employment and Energy and Natural Resources [...]

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 [...]

Brian Lenihan has finally released his favourite selective leak document of the last couple of months, the independent review into the capacity of the Dept of Finance and its performance over the last 10 years.  As the Minister — fresh from his Alamo stand for Fianna Fail in Dublin — says The Minister appointed the [...]

A couple of semi-formed thoughts of issues that perhaps deserved a little more attention in all the relentless punditry.

The Irish Dail has one major failing; parish pump politics. There are a couple of theories as to why, but it seems the only national level views are to be found in the cabinet, the shadow cabinet and the Seanad. And that scope is why its needed. Its problems (and its expense) is why the [...]

Rediscovering his “mandate” mojo on Election Eve, Brian Lenihan has moved virtually all of Anglo’s deposits and NAMA bonds to AIB.  An impolite question: where exactly is AIB getting the €3.5 billion in cash that it’s paying for the NAMA bonds?  Yes, it just sold the Polish operation to Banco Santander but that cash was [...]

Today in Commercial Court – Mr Justice Peter Kelly was told today that the [M1] tolling company is claiming it had a legitimate expectation, including a promise from the Minister for Transport Noel Dempsey, that tolls would go only up. The court heard that the Minister told the Dáil in June last year that the by-laws [...]

Bank of Ireland has done a Friday afternoon news dump of a provisional set of accounts for 2010 and an associated announcement that it will make a dividend payment on the National Pension Farewell Fund’s preference shares in the company — last year, the Bank was under a “dividend stopper” order from the European Commission [...]

Now obviously none of the reforms any party is proposing is going to be implemented. In 10 years time we will have the exact same political system. So I thought I might as well make up some of my own. Some or all of these could be recycled. In most countries with a party list [...]

To the extent that we weren’t already at that point, we’ve reached the limit of Brian Lenihan’s ability to credibly perform his role as Minister for Finance.   A week after claiming that he had no mandate as Minister to implement the recapitalisation of AIB, B of I, and EBS, he offered a string of inflammatory [...]

A week or so ago, as we were in the midst of a deluge of polls, I hazarded that Fine Gael may be on route to a majority or very close to it. While legitimate doubts were raised at the time, the trend for FG since has been upward and tonights margin-of-error beating 3% rise [...]

We’ve known for a while that Brian Lenihan’s statements are very slippery and therefore require especially careful analysis.  Consider therefore today’s deferment of the recapitalisation of the AIB, Bank of Ireland, and EBS to March – This was to be completed by the end of February. However, the Minister has informed the European Commission, the [...]

What a long strange road it’s been.  September 2008 – Irish Nationwide has reiterated that it has received no takeover approach from Anglo Irish Bank. The development follows speculation regarding the future ownership of the society. Today – The Direction Orders enable the State to commence the process of restructuring Anglo and INBS as envisaged [...]

Not as focussed on the leader as the others.