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

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 [...]

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.

  “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 [...]

It didn’t seem possible that the Irish political system could look more busted today than it did yesterday but that’s where the version of Lanigan’s Ball from the Greens leaves it.   Michael Lowry — having had the leverage of his side-deal with the Coalition for nearly 3 years in return for his vote, runs to [...]

Thanks to politics.ie. FG 31 (-2) FF24,(nc) LAB 23 (-4) SF 10 (+2) GR 3 (+1) Oths 9 (+3) Underlines volatility of Labour vote. Also public satisfaction with Brian Cowen is 19% to 64% dissatisfied and 17% undecided. 29% are more likekly to vote vote FF with Cowen replaced, including 21% of FG and Labour [...]

July 1st, 2010. A momentous day for Ireland, and one that will be remembered in history for a long time to come. Not as momentous as July 7th, 1993 perhaps, but astonishing that we’ve reached this point just 17 years after Mary Robinson signed into law the decriminalisation of homosexuality.

Reports tonight on the pending reshuffle suggest that Green leader John Gormley might be set to step aside as Minister for the Environment to make way for Ciaran Cuffe as part of an ‘internal’ agreement among the greens made in 2007. According to the Irish Times and others, Green memebers were given to understand that [...]

The Green Party continues to move from one pot-hole to the next. This evening Deirdre De Burca is backing up her concerns about the DDDA, which she says she raised with the minister, with personal e-mails released on her website tonight. The email to Minister Gormley in August 2009. The DDDA report is going to [...]

There will be days of digesting the implications of the Willie O’Dea resignation.  Here’s a few impressions of where we are; doubtless others have their own.

How long before she is “that woman” in the corridors of Leinster House?  An all-guns-blazing statement from Deirdre de Burca in response to the Sunday broadsheet spinning about her resignation.  It’s one little detail after another (going back to Dermot Ahern’s blasphemy bill) but including this nugget – The Green Party had favoured Pat Cox [...]

4 days is a long time in politics.  Remember when the George Lee resignation seemed to dominate?  Deirdre de Burca in today’s Irish Times – In fact, matters have become more serious of late where Brian Cowen appears to have failed to honour two specific agreements that were made at the highest level (ie between [...]

The Taoiseach’s department has released the text of the Cabinet statement in support of John Gormley which was distributed to the pol corrs last night.  Full text below the fold.  One thing to note – The Government has already decided to impose a levy on incineration. The legislation to allow for this is being drafted [...]

Paul Gogarty is not the most famous Irish TD. Certainly not the most famous in the Green Party. Of their 6 TD’s he probably is the 7th more famous (Senator Dan Boyle) . But now he will be at least 6th most famous. The advent of the internet means that what might of been a 1 [...]

[Cross-posted on TheStory - please appreciate I wrote this at 1.30am after a day spent reading official documents. Mistakes are a possibility, I'm open to discussion in comments section] It’s about a year since An Taoiseach announced plans to develop ‘The Smart Economy’ (the successor to ‘The Knowledge Economy’, remember that?). In those twelve months [...]