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

BBC Radio 4 with another scoop that should probably have been dug up by an Irish media outlet first.  The Manx2 crash at Cork Airport with the plane coming from Belfast.  The “airline’s” response to all queries — nothing to do us, sorry, we only sold the tickets.  A question for regulators both sides of the [...]

This might appear to be a little behind the curve, thanks to my first effort getting lost on the WP app. Anyway….. The response of Ceann Comhairle John O Donoghue to the reports of his extremely large expenses bills from his time in Arts, Sport and Tourism unveil a couple of things our erstwhile snippers [...]

Here we go again.  Aer Lingus is withdrawing more services from Shannon.  But this row is going to play out very differently than the end of Shannon-Heathrow.   The latter row caught the government on the hop but also featured an Aer Lingus in a very different mood, confident that it could launch a sub-hub in [...]

So we are being told that we have to cut back. The government is running out of money and we are cutting services like mad but one we are not cutting is.    A helicopter carrying Minister for Tourism Martin Cullen was forced to make an emergency landing in Killarney this afternoon. Mr Cullen had [...]

Irish Times background on the inevitable Rody Molloy resignation – Discussions had taken place all day yesterday between officials of the Department of Enterprise, Mr Molloy and the chairman of Fás, the trade union leader, Peter McCloone. Ms Coughlan, who was on a trade mission to Dubai, spoke by phone to Mr Molloy and Mr [...]

Yesterday, in the aftermath of the climbdown regarding the Medical Cards fiasco, I read a post on the weblog of Green Party Justice Spokesperson Ciarán Cuffe, which dealt with the Medical Cards issue. After reading the post, I gave him my view of the Fianna Fáíl / Green coalition, and put some questions to him [...]

Not that it’s any use in solving the problem, but has anyone done a cost comparison on the storage costs for the e-voting machines versus the cost of having a backup radar system for Dublin Airport?  In a cinematic note, the existence of a backup radar system was of course a key plot twist in [...]

One of Bertie Ahern‘s home stretch events today was to launch the Dublin Airport Authority’s plan for Dublin Airport City.   Not to put too fine a point on it, this seems like one of the crazier proposals to have emerged over the last year, and symptomatic of much of what is wrong with governance and [...]

Dublin City Council is considering the merits of imposing a “tourist tax” of €1 per night on beds in hotels, hostels and B&Bs in the city in order to raise additional revenue. Ignoring the fact that this is the taxation equivalent of licking your plate clean after large a steak dinner, there are many questions [...]

From RTE. The Taoiseach has defended the amount of money spent sending ministers and government officials abroad for St Patrick’s Day. Will we get a clear and consise break down of the benefit these trips gained when they come out and the specific reasons why their WAGs and HABs get to go as well funded [...]

One wonders if the Cabinet have decided to collect their deferred pay raises as travel benefits. Just in the last few days: Mary Hanafin postpones a trip to the USA by a day to appear at a Dail debate on autism; Dermot Ahern still says he’s travelling across the world to East Timor even with [...]

The people of the Shannon region probably would have ranked the options for airport hub connections as follows: (1) restoration of the Aer Lingus service, (2) British Midland to Heathrow, and (3) service to a continental hub.  For now they are getting the third, with Cityjet service to Roissy/Charles de Gaulle, meaning connections to the [...]

A quick review of where things stand on Aer Lingus and its services to Heathrow.  First, yet more evidence that Belfast is not the golden goose that EI seemed to think it was heading towards.  Easyjet is beginning European services out of Aldergrove almost immediately, including one to Barcelona that will compete head-to-head with Aer [...]

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. [...]

Video from yesterday’s Save Our Slots Rally I am unable to embed them here, but they can be found at the below link Link. Update Simon. Video added below

There was a lively atmosphere on O’Connell Street in Limerick today with a red army again packing the street. Today rather than rugby, it was the issue of Shannon and its slots that were the main event. The press are pulling their punches at the moment but the only FF TD, John Creegan, on the [...]