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

Labour recently came out with their new energy policy document . Now it had a few interesting bits and pieces and lots of generic waffle. But they do talk about Nuclear power. We consider that nuclear power is not an option for Ireland at present on financial,environmental or technical grounds. Now that really doesn’t tell [...]

[edit: We were 2 days ahead of the Indo and unlike them, we provide original sources for the quotes.  Read on ...] The Cork flood.  From the technical yet fascinating “Flood risk management through reservoir storage and flow control” (2001) by J. Fitzpatrick and T. Bree of ESB International – A study was undertaken by [...]

Another day another Labour press Release to look at. UK nuclear plans, a major worry There are still many unanswered questions about, for example, the link between the incidence of particular cancers in Co Louth Interesting statement depends on how you define the word unanswered.

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 over [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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, [...]