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

On 12 October 2012, a process by which an opinion column written by opinion columnist Kevin Myers on the opinion pages of the Irish Independent newspaper had been hauled before Ireland’s statutory Press Ombudsman came to an end. The Press Ombudsman ruled that opinion columnist Kevin Myers had used his opinion column on the opinion [...]

[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 [...]

Today one of the most important reports on Ireland was released. No not Bord Snip Nua Nua. The CSO’s Measuring Ireland’s progress. I would urge everyone to have a read of it. I am sure the papers will only cover it in passing. No special supplements but it is a great resource. It is a bloggers [...]

So, ‘turns out that Denis O’Brien has done interviews with all the Sunday broadsheets, The Sunday Times was just the first to update its website, hence was the centre of all the talk online, including my earlier post. Yes, the O’Brien spin cycle has gone into overdrive. Apart from the (Murdoch-owned) Sunday Times’ interview mentioned [...]

Someone has finally reported on the contents of the Moriarty Tribunal’s Preliminary Report – it has been under media embargo since November. Mark Tighe of the Sunday Times interviewed Denis O’Brien who helpfully revealed some of the embargoed contents. The story is summed up in the opening two paragraphs (a sign of a well-written piece) – [...]

Conor Lenihan Junior minister for science, technology, innovation and natural resources. Is taken to task quiet funnily by Sunday Business Post Journalist Adrian Weckler. My favourite bit.

It’s been a particular achievement of the last 11 years of government to have had Eircom try a few years with every just-past-its-prime ownership model.  The current is the Australian innovation of an investment bank which runs a separate fund bringing in other investors to own and manage the target company which is acquired with [...]

The Irish Times reports that Eircom are considering giving/selling some stake in the infrastructure/wholesale division to the Government, giving them the chance to undo some of the mess that selling off Eircom yielded to broadband rollout among other things. Its one among many options but its one that I, as a blogger, and the government, [...]

From the man who would know, Damien Mulley. Below is some of the post, worth reading and remembering. “Noel Dempsey has really pissed off a lot of rural communities after finally admitting that they won’t invest in the Group Broadband Scheme anymore. Despite telling people for all of 2005 and 2006 that all they had [...]

I quite like McDowell and agree with his policies and mainly agree with what he says in this speech. However, there is a bit of fact checking that needs to be done. So I will look at this line: The recent OECD report shows that in 1994, prior to liberalisation, Irish telecommunications charges were over [...]

At the ComReg and DCMNR joint conference on “Broadband Leadership” Noel Dempsey awkwardly announced that Ireland had “smashed” the broadband target he set two years ago. The target was for Ireland to have 400,000 broadband subscribers by the end of 2006 and he announced that we currently stand at 410,000 subscribers. This is a target [...]

“Dempsey talking balderdash on broadband,” or so goes the Labour headline following this release from Fianna Fail. Speaking at the “Facilitating Broadband Leadership” conference today, Minister for Communications Noel Dempsey announced he is initiating a process to deliver broadband to the last 15% to 20% of the population where it is currently uneconomic to do [...]