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

Peruse the diagram above. The green/yellow states are those voting with DREs with a voter-verified paper-trail (VVPR) (except in Tennessee, Colorado and Maryland where the relevant legislation has been passed but doesn’t come into force this year) and with/without (respectively) a paper audit-trail. The red-states are those requiring neither a [...]

Brian Cowen is talking to the EU Legal Service about drafting opt-outs and protocols to make the Lisbon Treaty “palatable to the Irish public” according to Jamie Smyth and others this morning.
Cowen, who said the France, which is the current president of the EU, had also asked the Council of Ministers’ legal services “to see [...]

In a week dominated by harrowing scenes of civilian suffering in the ongoing Russian-Georgian conflict over the separatist region of South Ossetia. There are shades of the Sudetenland crisis in 1938, when Hitler, on the pretext of defending a ‘persecuted’ German minority in that region of Czechoslovakia, was appeased and [...]

Even before the Irish people’s democratic decision to reject the fatally-flawed Lisbon Treaty, (which would have deepened the democratic-deficit in Europe still further), the source of Libertas funding was a bane of “yes” campaigners. To the elite, the possibility of the ‘mainstream’ parties being so decisively outspent by this upstart pro-business [...]

The WTO talks are a little like the Tribunals. For the most part, progress is confined to a tiny box on page 8 of the Irish Times or Indo unless the leading lights drag it up the agenda. While both are meaningful in themselves and have great symbolic (on the perception of cleansing politics or [...]

I’m one of those people who hasn’t quite decided which way they’re going to vote on in the referendum. This is because I haven’t got around to reading all of the text I’m voting on yet. However, there’s one incredibly stupid argument the no camp is bandying about right now. It’s an argument that does [...]

*Sub-Committee on Foreign Affairs.
Fine Gael Spokesperson on Foreign Affairs Bill Timmins met with the Foreign Minister of the Tibeten Government in-exile today and suggested that the visit of the Dali Lama to the UK (May 20-31) represented a great chance to have him address the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Foreign Affairs.
Why not the Oireachtas as [...]

Libertas have an outraged press release accusing the Irish government of a systematic campaign to hide information on the Lisbon Treaty based on what they call “an email from a very senior Irish official to his British counterpart” which the Daily Mail published today. Headlined the Treaty Con, this story is picked up by a [...]

Despite operating under the slogan, “Facts, not Politics”, eurosceptic organisation Libertas have been accused by EU Commissioner Margot Wallstorm in her blog today for carrying out “a case study in distortion through selective quotation”. Essentially, Libertas quoted a speech she gave where she said “Whatever we win in efficiency we might lose in democratic legitimacy [...]

Unless one is a fan of some of the organisations which generally only come to our attention courtesy of the Cedar Lounge’s Irish Left Archive, chances are you don’t generally follow the Korean Central New Agency. Unfortunately, you would be a lesser person for that, as the voice of the world’s most secretive regime is [...]

With all the weighty constitutional matters of the week, something on a lighter note: UK foreign secretary David Miliband says that an unnamed foreign minister told him during the EU ministerial in Slovenia last week that he had lost his bags in transit at Heathrow T5.  The media seem to think that it was a [...]

At the Saint Patrick’s Day reception –
President, as we say good-bye on this occasion, but hopefully we’ll keep in touch over the years, I will remember — and I hope that everyone in Ireland will — how kind, how favorable you’ve been, how really open you’ve been to helping us, and the amount of time [...]

From RTE.
Amnesty International has said Ireland is clearly contravening international law by allowing its territory to be used to facilitate the practice of extraordinary rendition.The group is basing its claim on the findings of its latest report.Amnesty in Ireland claims Shannon Airport was used to refuel an aircraft that the following day was allegedly used to move [...]

Interesting reading in the Financial Times today. First, a short comment piece by Quentin Peel on Bertie and the Lisbon referendum; nothing that we don’t know in Ireland but since it reflects chatter in Brussels, perhaps indicative of growing nervousness amongst the Eurocrats about Bertie’s handling of the vote. Second, an [...]

While his row with John Deasy was the one which caught the headlines, the interesting comments from Willie O’Dea last week were his comments on the Chinese involvement in Chad’s civil war:
The rebellion is supported by Chad’s powerful neighbour, Sudan, whose regime is in turn by the Government of China.
…
Approaches to the Chinese authorities would [...]