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

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 [...]

With Sean Gallagher now taken out of his Presidential hopes, convicted fuel-smuggler and Gallagher-accuser Hugh Morgan has changed his story for a second time. He now says the invite to the FF fundraising event may not have been issued by Gallagher at all, but by former FF TD for Louth Seamus Kirk. Kirk himself says [...]

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 [...]

Edit at 14:00The full manifesto is available here. It is really hard to read the Irish Times report on today’s Fianna Fail manifesto launch and avoid thinking three, cynical thoughts. 1) All well and good, but you were in power for the last 13 years. Whither the new found reform zeal? 2) The Green Party [...]

Just announced.  Laois-Offaly was 3FF, 2 FG in 2007.  Could FF be looking at 1 now? (Maybe not — see below).   Hopefully that little issue of the caretaker Taoiseach not being a TD is sorted out by now, presumably on the grounds that he was a TD when he was given the status.   Anyway, [...]

Following @shaymcdaid on twitter from the slection conference in Donegal NE where Neil Blaney has given a speech declaring he is bowing out of the race meaning right now Fianna Fail are to run a single candidate, Charlie McConalogue. HQ will decide on a 2nd tomorrow. As pointed out by @faduda this is the first [...]

Although we’re still in the phoney war stage of the election campaign, it seems that the basic FF strategy is to throw a bunch of, er, stuff, at the wall and see what sticks.  In that regard, we got today in the Senate an interesting and tendentious exchange between Sen. Alex White (Lab.) and Minister [...]

Capping the worst 5 days work from a Taoiseach in Irish history, Brian Cowen has gone from being a reaffirmed leader of FF and sitting on his preference for an extended election campaign to losing 7 ministers (8 if you count the non-replacement of Micheal Martin) and the leadership of Fianna Fail, along with the [...]

Brian Cowen last discussed the government side-deals with the 2 independents on 10 November.  We’ve got the whole exchange below the fold, but the key point is that the Michael Lowry and Jackie Healy-Rae agreements are with the leader of Fianna Fail, not an Taoiseach.  Brian Cowen inherited them from Bertie Ahern but they are [...]

It’s going to be a long week. Presumably we all know by now that Brian Cowen has reversed his position of one week ago that the positions of Taoiseach and party leader should not be separated and has resigned as leader of Fianna Fail.

One of the over looked aspects of the last week was the calling of the election for the 11th of March. The significance of that date is that it is a Friday. Now traditionally Irish general elections are on a Thursday. Back around the time of the last general election we started a campaign called [...]

  “They’ve changed the arrangements that apply to coalition governments” … Brian Cowen on the Greens just now on Six One.  Apparently there’s an unwritten constitution for such governments.  His tone of lecturing the Greens on how government works is not going to go down well.   He is also mingling his roles of Taoiseach and [...]

From the start, there have been questions about the government’s number10.gov.uk style website,  merrionstreet.ie.   Despite the presence of special advisers, media affairs units, and handlers in government offices, there’s supposed to be a clear line between political boosterism and the provision of taxpayer-financed official information.  Yet within an hour of the Taoiseach’s unscheduled Thursday statement [...]

Resignations from Mary Harney, followed by Noel Dempsey, Dermot Ahern, and Tony Killeen.  As Brian Cowen appears to have been sitting on at least one of these letters for over a week, we don’t know the timing.  But Mary Harney correctly pointed to the problem with TDs intending to retire from politics — and thus [...]

Sez DDP. The vote count — as far as gossip can determine – will be important in determining the fallout, but so will the respective reputations of Micheal Martin and Brian Lenihan within the party after today’s events.  Cowen now says (to RTE News) he has accepted Martin’s resignation.  Any chance that Cowen takes the foreign affairs portfolio [...]

And then backing away. A great sequence on RTE Radio 1 News at One just now. Brian Lenihan said his position has always been that there is no vacancy for leadership so the question of his interest in it did not arise. Right afterwards, John McGuinness said that Lenihan had encouraged him and other backbenchers [...]