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

From last night’s debate on a private members motion (FG) on Crumlin cutbacks.
During the debate in the Dail, Ms Harney said: “I find it strange that when we ask hospitals to make efficiency savings, some hospitals decide that the most sensitive area is the area that should be cut first.”
Those nasty hospitals….taking spin to a [...]

Enda Kenny has dropped Frank Flannery as the Fine Gael director of elections following controversy caused by Flannery’s remarks during the recent election campaign, The Indo reports.
Update: The Irish Times say that it is not a “demotion” but that the director of elections position was not a continuous role.
For those not up to speed, Flannery [...]

The Fianna Fáil second tier are dripping into the count centre as we speak. Sean Haughey was first – arriving about an hour ago. Pat Carey popped in a half-hour later. Mary Hanafin is the latest, she sauntered in quietly under the radar and hugged Maurice Ahern while most cameras wern’t switched on – mine [...]

Enda and George will be looking to nail the Greens into the coffin on Tuesday. Both men know that the motion of no confidence will not succeed. Both know that if they were to move into government that in the eyes of the international community they’d be committed to supplying €4bn of taxpayers money to [...]

The cheeky chappies in Fine Gael have been stealing Irish Election’s thunder by doing some moratorium busting of their own. I travel through Dublin city every day, from west to east and north to south and didn’t spot one of the posters below until today. However Adam Maguire informed me via Twitter that they have [...]

Stephen Spillane is a long-time Fine Gael member from Cork. He was recently unemplyed when economic conditions forced his former employer to reduce staffing numbers. He blogs about European and Irish political issues here.
–
The upcoming elections give the people of Ireland a chance to say enough is enough. Enough of this Government who wasted the [...]

Interesting report in this morning’s Irish Independent from Fionnan Sheehan, Senan Moloney and Conor Kane on the on-going will-they won’t-they in Fine Gael regarding coalition with Sinn Féin.
The Indo’s team point out that Kenny did not rule out a coalition with any party when speaking to TG4 at the FG Ard Fheis earlier this [...]

The early numbers are out from tomorrow’s breakdown of the European race. Keith had some of the early East constituency numbers online a while ago and the rest of the details is clearing up now. Yesterday had Fianna Fail on 20%, Labour on 23% and Fine Gael on 36% – interesting to see how the [...]

Yesterday we had plans for apartment dwellers (can you canvass them?), plans for the unemployed (well 2,000 of the almost 500,000), plans for retraining those on part-time, opposition policies for Dublin and for small business. Calls for tax cuts and incentives – woo hoo for voters! You would think it is a general election.
A cautionary [...]

Dug up from the RTE archives. Michael Woods trying to justify the indemnity deal on September 30, 2003.

Yes Michael, it was done by the people of Ireland, not the religious orders. You gobshite.
Full clip here.

Stephen Spillane has interesting details of the Evening Echo poll conducted by Landsdowne in Cork city and county.

Fianna Fail – 9%
Fine Gael – 23%
Labour – 20%
Green Party – 4%
Sinn Fein – 6%
Socialists – 0%
Independent/Libertas – 16%
No Party/Vote for Personality – 23%
Don’t Know – 13%

Yesterday we got Brian Cowen’s ‘watch this’ video, today its Enda’s team for Europe. Uploaded last night, it runs through all of the candidates with a narrative and brief piece of Enda at the start.

Reports reached me over the weekend of sightings of tag rugby games by canvassers in various parks in the South East Dublin area.  The story went that canvassers went from park to park in t-shirts playing matches and there were posters about and much merriment.   No match reports or sightings of new players emerging to [...]

If there is one thing you should do today it’s buy The Irish Examiner. Go, g’wan, buy it. Even if you’re not from Cork. Even if you’re not from Munster. Feck it, go and buy it if you’ve never bought a paper or watched the news before. Please, for the good of the country, buy [...]

From Irish Times
Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny said today the Government’s poor showing in the latest opinion poll reflected widespread public angry at how the country was being run.
The latest Irish Times /TNS mrbi poll shows satisfaction with [...]

Someone in Fine Gael now has a video camera (!) and recorded George Lee’s acceptance speech at the Dublin South Fine Gael Selection Convention.