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

Bertie-hooray, Enda & Eamon-boo. Below is the Fianna Fail response to the gains it has seen in the Irish Times and Sunday Business Post over the week. As you can see, it is thrilled with its performance but it strikes me that this is also a boot that they have been waiting to apply for [...]

The trend since the election has been the return of the 2+ party system and this poll does little to dispel that impression. Following closely on the Irish Times poll midweek, there is good news for both of the big parties in today’s Sunday Business Post poll. Fianna Fail are up four to 36% while [...]

There is a major ruck going on in the Republic over the rather convoluted and, frankly, highly dodgy account the Taoiseach has given the Mahon Tribunal concerning his tax affairs. Cian has the Enda Kenny statement that the Irish Times re-published in full in yesterday’s paper. Mr Ahern responded by calling the opposition leader a [...]

Briefly, Enda releases a statment calling on Cowen to act on Bertie if he refuses to step aside and they reply against his ‘increasingly personal’ attacks. Both statements below the fold.

We had this up yesterday about the Fine Gael proposals on Schools and the piece about cheap laptop provision to all students. Hanafin has laughed off the possibility of supplying laptops to all 344,000 secondary pupils for a total of €23m – or just under €67 each. The main reason is the requirement for software suites [...]

Already they have said that they will get 69 euro laptops. Now John Gormley has joined them.
Phil Hogan T.D.”>Three Green Ministers Adopting Three Monkeys Approach to FF Attacks on Tribunal - Gormley. (It should be Hogan)
Usually they have the name of the releaser on the headline like.
Portlaoise commuters pay 113% more than those in Carlow [...]

Pat Leahy writing in the Sunday Business Post the other day noted something that I’d missed. When talking about the ‘fate of the opposition’ parties over the next twelve months he suggested that ‘…there is [a] significant cleavage emerging between the two main opposition parties following the failure of the so-called ‘Mullingar Accord’ to deliver [...]

I missed this on Wednesday. Flanagan seeks to ban samurai swords after spate of attacks
Edit. What have Fine Gael to fear.. Youtube embeding not really working so click here. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdLCEwEFCMU

Well it didn’t take long for Leo Varadkar to join the queue for the ‘Will FG just stop’ treatise that Simon has started. Having watched Dr. Varadkar from afar during some of his student days I’m not surprised. I’m only waiting for Lucinda Creighton to call for women to be charged for post abortion [...]

What they spent Report on disclosure of donations and election expenses at Dáil general election of 2007.
Breakdown
Fianna Fáil €3,650,240.55.

Fine Gael €2,809,474.25
The Labour Party €1,477,321.48
Progressive Democrats €1,012,707.52
Non-Party €795,862.25
Sinn Féin €685,095.66
The Green Party €553,858.70
Socialist Party €56,125.49
The Workers Party €30,200.14
Christian Solidarity Party €11,427.06

First this week Fine Gael wanted fishermen to fight drugs. Now they want the army to correct kids posture.
the army could also help with posture development of schoolchildren. There is considerable expertise in posture correction and improvement in the Defence Forces.
This is part of a press release that says
Fine Gael Defence Spokesman Jimmy Deenihan TD [...]

From Phantom 105.2. Is it April already?
Young Fine Gael are refusing to comment on speculation that they may be releasing a Christmas single. Excerpts of the likely track entitled ‘The Ballad of Enda Kenny‘ have surfaced on youtube.
View it here.

Will someone over in Fine Gael HQ simply tell people to shut up. Just stop talking. Seriously. Again today we have another crack pot anti-drugs idea.
Fishermen alienated by Govt could help in fight against drugs - Creed
Please stop the hurt.

What is it with Fine Gael and random Drug testing and searches. Do they have shares in it of something. Their usual hobby horse drug testing is schools has been around for about a year which has very little research supporting the notion that it works. But now they have moved on to clubs. Gardaí [...]

Speaking in the Dail Enda Kenny brought up his old chestnut drug testing in schools. (Considering the recent allegations that drug taking was happening in the dail you can sigh our petition to drug test Dail Eireann here)
I made a suggestion previously based on analysis of works done in other countries where a voluntary code [...]

It took me a while to realise there was something very odd about the latest RedC poll in the Sunday Business Post. Sure, Fianna Fáil has dipped precipitously. Well, after the month they’ve had one would think they’d better be down, at least a bit. Provisional Licences, pay increases, the latest noises from the Tribunal [...]