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

Central Bank board member* David Begg reviews Peader Kirby’s book on the collapse of the Celtic Tiger – It cannot be gainsaid that the social outcomes were less than were hoped for but the last agreement, Towards 2016, was the closest we have ever come to a social democratic programme in this country. This collapsed [...]

Colm McCarthy, UCD economist makes the front page of the Examiner for his contribution to yesterday’s  conference on getting past the downturn. He is now chairman of the board charged with shrinking government spending and helping to target cuts in the public service. Interestingly he has a few things to say about the tax system [...]

It seems to stand to reason that with so many high profile developers (and plenty of low profile developers dotted around the country too) going to the wall as the bubble collapsed and banks called in loans outstanding, the future of PPP projects in providing social housing would fall into question. Well according to the [...]

In the downloadable rich text version (large file) of Building Ireland’s Smart Economy, one can check the file properties and see the author identified as Peter Clinch.  Peter Clinch is a Special Advisor (or SpAd, as Guido calls them) in the Department of an Taoiseach.  Now that’s fine.  Someone had to coordinate the different components [...]

The centrepiece of today’s announcement of public spending cuts by Brian Lenihan and Brian Cowen is a claim that the motivation is to cut only current spending while preserving capital spending.  This may make for pleasing-sounding spin and apparent commitment to the NDP but it ignores one simple thing: capital projects don’t exist in isolation.  They [...]

Is that news which slips out now has got to be bloody good to dislodge other politics stories from the news and really really good to last more than one turn of the news cycle (and how long is that now?). Which is why its a good time to draw some more lines and circles [...]

One of Bertie Ahern‘s home stretch events today was to launch the Dublin Airport Authority’s plan for Dublin Airport City.   Not to put too fine a point on it, this seems like one of the crazier proposals to have emerged over the last year, and symptomatic of much of what is wrong with governance and [...]

The departments of an Taoiseach and transport have made available the report of senior officials on the Shannon-Heathrow route along with a press release from the government  summarising the report and outlining next steps.  The press release is the usual blather and jargon but the detailed report is actually a little more substantive, indicating that [...]

The Greens launched their tax and economic policy this morning. It is interesting to note, first off, that the Green Party reckon growth forecasts should be no higher than 4% over the coming years. The PDs on Sunday used 5%+ and I think FG and Labour had a similar figure.

In 2002 the Government was accused of buying the election with an overly generous budget. This year it could be argued that they’re trying to do the same again with the majority of SSIAs maturing in the coming weeks (what a coincidence!), the launch of the next NDP a few months ago and a not [...]

The EPA released a report looking at the impact of climate change on Ireland in the coming years, since its only 30 pages long, I recommend you read it. However below the fold I have copied the table in the report looking at likely outcomes from temperature changes in Ireland. By the way, that sea [...]

Last Sunday’s SBP/Red C poll capped off a particularly rocky patch for the ‘Alternative Coalition’. Since October last both parties have endured a public revolt against their vision, following by a lengthy interrogation of Labour’s committment to Fine Gael.And with Fianna Fail riding high as a result of their leader’s very public low, and the [...]

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 [...]

The interesting thing about the NDP is the hopefulness of it all. It is presented as the next phase of NDPs which is to build on the foundation of the 200-2006 model and expand infrastructure. It will now include social infrastructure also which is an essentail element. In the area of transport, we saw that [...]