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

Denis O’Brien won his defamation case against the Irish Daily Mail’s Paul Drury yesterday because the Mail’s “honest opinion” defence of Drury’s column failed since they could not establish the truth of the facts which formed its basis. The honest opinion defence was introduced into Irish law by Michael McDowell in the Defamation Bill of [...]

Credit to Vincent Browne: on what would otherwise be the silly season, and apparently on his holliers, he has been stirring the pot in his feud with Denis O’Brien via his column in the Irish Times (also on politico.ie). Today’s salvo is mostly devoted to DOB’s role at Independent Newspapers, but VB leaves out a [...]

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 [...]

The chemist chop I went into to pick up a few things had a notice on the counter to say it wasn’t their fault, it was Mary Harney’s. They couldn’t fill HSE prescriptions and their best advice to patients was to contact Mary Harney – office address and phone numbers supplied – or their local [...]

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 [...]

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, [...]

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 [...]

If there is one thing you should do today it’s buy The Irish Examiner. Go, g’wan, buy it. Even if you’re not from Cork. Even if you’re not from Munster. Feck it, go and buy it if you’ve never bought a paper or watched the news before. Please, for the good of the country, buy [...]

PD local councillor Cait Keane has joined Fine Gael in Dublin South. There is by-election coming up and with Tom Kitt steppign down in 2012 Fine Gael might lick their chops at a potentail third seat.

Back in March of 2007 I queried the professional backgrounds of the then FF/PD cabinet with respect to their experience of the realities of making things and what could be termed the productive sector of the economy. Batt O’Keeffe appears to have revived interest in the topic in recent days by suggesting that we need [...]

ITs a good week for Red C to take the latest tracking poll for the Sunday Business Post. Markets are falling like stones (Friday has the potential to be another massive dead cat bounce) and the government don’t look to have stamped authority on many aspects of policy.

Good riddance. Or as WorldbyStorm writes over at Cedar Lounge Revolution, ‘The PDs get a a four week reprieve. Then they die.’ Can’t come soon enough. The only downside is that we’ll have to endure a plethora of obituaries telling us how the PDs made a difference, how they shaped whole governments regardless of their [...]

IF you haven’t glimpsed the Sunday Independent, you can guarantee that the edited extract of a speech given by Junior Minister at the Department of Trade and Enterprise John McGuinness will be dominating discussion of the Social Partnership talks over the coming days. It remains unclear if the governmen is capable of steering a course [...]

Grealish keeps spinning the bottle

Noel Grealish prolongs the agony for Progresive Democrats by failing to kill them of.