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

One wonders if election posters working around the Brian Lenihan on Primetime claim that “we all partied” are already being printed up.  By coincidence, the CSO has released the numbers from the 2009 survey of household income and living conditions.  This survey appears to be a critical source of  information on trends in household income [...]

Friday evening. Bank holiday weekend.  What better time for a document dump? We are now much closer to the “nearly 200″ figure for deaths of young people in some form of care/interaction that initially circulated in the media.  Not least because the 151 doesn’t include the earlier 37.   Apparently the post-18 years of age transition [...]

The Department of Finance has news dumped an analysis of “Replacement Rates and Unemployment” while everyone is waiting for the 12 Days of Christmas deal with the public sector unions to be finalized.  The replacement rate is defined as the percentage of potential disposable income in a job that could be retained by a household [...]

Radio Ulster’s Sunday Sequence this morning had a superb roundup of the Ryan commission report and the fallout from it, with a comprehensive panel discussion (segment begins 33 minutes in).  The panel discussion made news with an apparent nod from the hierarchy that the 2002 indemnity deal will have to be reopened.  A nod that [...]

Alarmingly for those of us who value Western freedoms including freedom of speech, the Minister for Justice, Dermot Ahern, has revealed his intention to make “blasphemous libel” a crime, punishable by a fine of €100,000. From the Irish Times:

The Government has refused a pensioner a fuel allowance because he’s 4c over the limit.  Does everything they touch right now turn to a PR disaster? Joe Costello: The Minister for Social and Family Affairs has taken over the role of Scrooge this Christmas. Henry Porter, a resident in the North Inner City and ninety [...]

Ok so we lost Joe. And we miss him. We really do. At the Dail yesterday they all gave him a nod. Tony Gregory said the place wouldn’t be the same. It won’t. It will. But it won’t. Fianna Fail are still in charge but Fine Gael’s muscles have gotten some electoral steroids. How hard [...]

Will look something like this it seems, Pat today announced a 100 day in office plan (modelled on this?). Below are the ten priorities (from labour.ie):

What you mean you missed it? Don’t worry so have a lot of people. The Social Welfare and Pensions Bill 2007 is currently going through the Oireachtas. Contained in that bill is a clause that will mean that private developers in the many areas of Dublin will be able to tell buyers that nobody on [...]

Well auction politics or poker politics, it is all academic. He saw the opposition, by equalling commitments on the standard rate (down to 18% – originally Labour), the pension (€300 over the five years of government – originally PDs), lower the higher rate of tax (down to 40% – not as much as the PDs). [...]

Whatever happened to good old Robin Hood and taking from the rich to give to the poor? (First posted on Skinflicks.)

Pity the Labour Party. They have bent over backwards to insist they will not raise taxes. The first issue of their free tabloid, The Rose, stated baldly on the front page, ‘Taxes are low and will stay low.’ They have entered an election pact with a party that details all the taxes they won’t raise, [...]

A priest on Liveline talking about the right for prisoners to vote. Made this point that in Northern Ireland majority ruled and the nationalists had no voice. The same thing should be done in this country. But with the 20% of people being poor or at risk of poverty and 80% not the poor’s view [...]

Sans the Fine Gael logo—doubtless in response to the identity issues which have plagued Labour—Labour launched their policy on poverty in Ireland this evening (Fair Deal: PDF). It is for us to suppose that there is little in it that Fine Gael disagree with, including the use of relative poverty as the measure. The initial [...]

I finally get a spare twenty minutes to do a post and it’s way too late to comment on the government’s recent flip in the polls. Well tough, I’m going to do it anyway. It’s hardly a new idea but I am willing to wager that at least some of the recent good numbers for [...]

From Breaking News.ie EAPN Ireland chairman Joe Gallagher said ‘relative’ poverty in Ireland is measured by not being able to afford certain necessities, like a warm coat or heating at home, while in most other developed countries, it is found by the number falling below 60% of ‘mean’ earnings. “By this measure, Ireland has the [...]