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

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 [...]

This business about the M3 road being run through the hill of Tara is nothing new. It is however back in the news again. This time because a protester has chained herself inside a tunnel under which the roadworks are taking place. Her life is now in danger as the traffic of diggers passing over [...]

Newstalk’s Marc Coleman has a nice perch on the Financial Times comment page today to outline his fairly optimistic long-term view of the Irish economy despite the current property downturn.  His essential argument, to be outlined in more detail in his book, is that Ireland has two key assets for its long-term growth prospects: people [...]

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 [...]

On the day when it also emerged that the proposed ban on incandescent light bulbs might contravene EU regulations, the government has used a classic late Friday news dump to ensure the row over water charges for schools will continue to rumble. The issue is the clarification issued for Bertie Ahern‘s pre-Christmas declaration that schools [...]

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 [...]

There Is a lively discussion over on politics.ie at the moment about the new Motor tax regime. With many posters pointing out that it will make old cars paying higher motor tax then new ones. Poster noodles Just checked my car.. Ford Mondeo Diesel 115bhp TdCi, 2004. 154 grammes per Km. That makes me a [...]

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 [...]

Who said this. waste incineration is used extensively within the OECD countries and is regulated by a number of EU Directives. Irish environmental legislation, in particular the Environmental Protection Agency Act. 1992, provides for the licensing of waste incineration activities on the basis of best practicable standards, including relevant EU requirements. Licences for both industrial [...]

Bord Pleanala has laid a bed of nails for Minister Gormley. They have granted permission for the Poolbeg incinerator to go ahead with a capacity of 600,000. The inspector report recommended that the incinerator should only have a capacity of 500,00 tonnes at the most but DCC want the 600,000 to make up the shortfall [...]

Labour the other day released a press release about the new car add’s showing the CO2 emissions from cars such as adds with g/km of CO2 in them. Tommy Broughan says The transport sector contributes very significantly to our total greenhouse gas emissions. This proposal for making much more information available to consumers on the [...]

Announced this afternoon — the rule requiring that a driver on a 2nd provisional licence have a driver with a full licence in the car is postponed until end of June 2008. 8 months to clear the test backlog (209,000 currently on their 1st provisional, by the way). Statement from the Department of Transport below. [...]

It seems a happy coincidence that last week John Gormley announced national capacity for waste incineration in 2016 would be 400,000 tonnes and only two plants and today An Bord Pleanala give Indaver permission to increase the capacity of the Meath project and bring the capacity of their two plants in Cork and Meath up [...]

The new inside out is available for download, sorry for missing last week. This week the voice you hear is my own (go easy please). We are looking at Climate Change so hop over an have a look.

John Gormley has come out with his new building regulations and fine regulations they are too. However since a lot of our housing stock has been built of late with Fianna Fail’s forward planning it is a bit late. One interesting point is the regulation for more energy efficient lighting. With CFL lamps made mainly [...]