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

Photo owned by maveric2003 (cc)What caused the latest world economic crisis? Toxic Credit products? Sub-Prime Mortgages, Galway races tent, ninja morgages, Massive bonuses to executives? No none of these were the cause of the latest crisis they were simply the cliffs we were pushed off. But they were not the push that sent us [...]

The news that the ESB is to seek a 20pc price hike will if granted, drive the average annual bill up to a staggering €1,100. It is up to the Commission for Energy Regulation to sanction all such rises. Before it does so, it had better think hard about the hardship they could bring and [...]

I noted this from Labour Press Releases of late.
The Labour Party President and Foreign Affairs Spokesperson, Michael D Higgins TD, is in Norway, returning on Friday 11 April as part of a broad-based community delegation including members of Kilcommon parish in Erris
All very nice and everything but this bit caught my eye.
“The Corrib gas conflict [...]

I posted before about the pitfalls of Nuclear power. The FT highlights the largest. The cost of storage of waste.
Energy companies cannot be charged a fully commercial price by the government for disposing of nuclear waste without “killing the prospect” of a new generation of reactors, a government adviser will warn today.

I haven’ty much time to go through all this but if this is true.From Fine Gael.
Fine Gael Energy Spokesman Simon Coveney today (Thursday) accused Minister Eamon Ryan of performing a major u-turn on a key Programme for Government promise by announcing he is shelving proposals to transfer ownership of the electricity grid from the ESB [...]

Update: Below is a press release from Solus, the light bulb crowd about their meeting with Minister Gormley yesterday. They are not complimentary;
It was revealed today during a meeting with the Minister that his department had not put any proposals together on what lamps would be included in the ban and how he proposes to implement [...]

Eamon Ryan was on RTE this morning and said that it is time for a full debate on the merits of nuclear power in Ireland. In light of the decision which seems to be coming today in the UK to begin upgrading their nuclear power generators. A debate which has been called for a while [...]

Over on Indymedia they have details of the latest escaped by the shell to sea people. This time a group of them “scaled” can’t see any climbing gear in the photos and put in place a banner reading.
PROTECT IRISH NATURAL RESOURCES
Now call me nieve but arn’t we always told that the campaign is to PROTECT [...]

I am not the biggest fan of John Gormley but that does not mean I will not say he has done well. In his carbon budget one of the policies is to
develop a national energy efficiency standard for lightbulbs, which will see an end to the use of incandescent bulbs by January 2009.
I have always [...]

Indymedia is all alight with people cheering on the efforts of protesters who stormed the refinery (one commenter has likened it to 1916 which of course like this was a peaceful protest). With news that a person has be arrested for assaulting a Garda. I have talked in favour of the governments policy before thus [...]

The greens are continuing being the busiest people in the cabinet. This time it Eamon Ryan’s turn to do something. A new tax of 15% on profitable Gas and Oil finds in Ireland. Not a bad move. Certainly not exorbitant and in the era of high oil prices probably not enough to scare the oil [...]

Morgan pledges support for Unions in battle against privatisation of ESB. Isn’t he great?
Speaking today as ESB Unions met to discuss possible strike action over plans to hand over the National Transmission Grid to private company Eirgrid,
Oh dear a private company how terrible. Thing is look up Eirgrid and you find out.
EirGrid is owned by [...]

Part of the Sinn Fein Manifesto is this
The experience of Norway where the mineral exploration sector has become one of the engines of economic growth proves the benefits of state involvement in the natural resources sector in particular. Earnings from oil and gas contribute almost one third of state revenue in Norway. In contrast, the [...]

They are back to old form, not bothering with the online version. So we are stuck with a press release. Much of this is in the manifesto from last Sunday. “Crucially, we believe that environmental sustainability can be delivered in a way that doesn’t damage the economy,” he [McDowell] said.
To be fair, they have [...]

A while back the Corrib Gas was a big topic here and here. But is it going to come back? Frank Little of the Ceder Lounge brings the  topic back with response to a story in the Tribune that Statoil is looking at a new field in Mayo possibly bigger then Corrib.  For such a [...]

Simon has been harping on about cars and power stations for ages and he might just have to vote labour for it. They released their environment policy earlier today (well, yesterday at this rate) with a couple of eye-catching proposals which I think are a good idea. Bertie has already stressed the “fourth level” factor [...]