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

In a week when the use of forged documentation in the asylum-system was highlighted with the rejection by the Supreme Court of the appeal of Nigerian asylum-seeker Pamela Izevbekhai against her deportation, FG and Labour are proposing the allow asylum-seekers to work. Despite 13% unemployment and mass-emigration – Alan Shatter and Pat Rabbitte are now [...]

Another day, another confidence motion. Well it may have been if #fgheave was not going on in the background.
If you care to watch the main speeches you can watch Enda Kenny here (with James Reilly his new best friend/wannabe deputy leader sitting beside him) , Brian Cowen and him saying sorry for the government’s part, [...]

Here’s the text of Brian Cowen’s speech entitled “A Decade of Commemorations — Commemorating Our Shared History” to the Institute for British Irish Studies at UCD today.  There are various points to make.  One is that these speeches — and this is not Cowen’s fault — have adopted a psychobabble language since they are written [...]

A day after George Lee’s departure, we can see a situation that would have warranted another George politician to say “Heckuva job”.  Lee’s departure obscured the implosion of the year-long government talking point that NAMA would increase bank lending: the IMF had told them, quite sensibly, that it wouldn’t.  According to Enda’s statement yesterday, Lee [...]

Gordon Brown statement to House of Commons on Hillsborough Agreement –
None of this could have been achieved without working closely with the Irish government – and I pay tribute to Brian Cowen, the Irish Foreign Minister, Micheal Martin and to the Taoiseach’s predecessors Bertie Ahern and Albert Reynolds.
Who’s missing from that list of predecessor Taoisigh?

So Boy George has bit the bullet. Fallen on his own sword, hoist by his own petard, crashed and burned, came a cropper.
At 1pm today former RTE economist and more recently celebrity by-election candidate, George Lee, announced he is resiging his Dáil seat and his membership of the Fine Gael party.
It wasn’t happening fast enough [...]

Imagine your Enda Kenny. Fianna Fail are now down two TD’s so on 83 seats. Opposition are now on 81 seats. Suddenly the Dail dynamic is a bit different. 1 TD changes alot.  John O Donoghue’s casting vote is required. 2 TD’s change and the government is down.  Devins and Scanlon can’t be the last ones [...]

Update: Official Press Release here.
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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 the Yes and [...]

From last night’s debate on a private members motion (FG) on Crumlin cutbacks.
During the debate in the Dail, Ms Harney said: “I find it strange that when we ask hospitals to make efficiency savings, some hospitals decide that the most sensitive area is the area that should be cut first.”
Those nasty hospitals….taking spin to a [...]

Enda Kenny has dropped Frank Flannery as the Fine Gael director of elections following controversy caused by Flannery’s remarks during the recent election campaign, The Indo reports.
Update: The Irish Times say that it is not a “demotion” but that the director of elections position was not a continuous role.
For those not up to speed, Flannery [...]

The Fianna Fáil second tier are dripping into the count centre as we speak. Sean Haughey was first – arriving about an hour ago. Pat Carey popped in a half-hour later. Mary Hanafin is the latest, she sauntered in quietly under the radar and hugged Maurice Ahern while most cameras wern’t switched on – mine [...]

Enda and George will be looking to nail the Greens into the coffin on Tuesday. Both men know that the motion of no confidence will not succeed. Both know that if they were to move into government that in the eyes of the international community they’d be committed to supplying €4bn of taxpayers money to [...]

The cheeky chappies in Fine Gael have been stealing Irish Election’s thunder by doing some moratorium busting of their own. I travel through Dublin city every day, from west to east and north to south and didn’t spot one of the posters below until today. However Adam Maguire informed me via Twitter that they have [...]

Stephen Spillane is a long-time Fine Gael member from Cork. He was recently unemplyed when economic conditions forced his former employer to reduce staffing numbers. He blogs about European and Irish political issues here.
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The upcoming elections give the people of Ireland a chance to say enough is enough. Enough of this Government who wasted the [...]

Interesting report in this morning’s Irish Independent from Fionnan Sheehan, Senan Moloney and Conor Kane on the on-going will-they won’t-they in Fine Gael regarding coalition with Sinn Féin.
The Indo’s team point out that Kenny did not rule out a coalition with any party when speaking to TG4 at the FG Ard Fheis earlier this [...]

The early numbers are out from tomorrow’s breakdown of the European race. Keith had some of the early East constituency numbers online a while ago and the rest of the details is clearing up now. Yesterday had Fianna Fail on 20%, Labour on 23% and Fine Gael on 36% – interesting to see how the [...]