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

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 the Government has slumped to a record low of 10 per cent, with 86 per [...]

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

Fine Gael Party Leader, Enda Kenny TD, will today (Wednesday) meet George Lee, as well as sitting Dublin South TDs Olivia Mitchell and Alan Shatter for a media doorstep at 5:15pm at the Kildare St. Gate of Leinster House. After managing to get a full 24 hours out of his candidacy for Fine Gael – [...]

After Fine Gael announced its recent FairCare proposals for health service reform I contacted ILR contributor Dr. Gerry Burke, consultant obstetrician & gynaecologist in Limerick’s Regional and Maternity Hospitals and a vociferous campaigner against co-location to see what he thought of the proposals. I first asked him if the proposals would help improve patient outcomes [...]

So Enda Kenny made a trip to Israel and Gaza. I posted before about how they should have blogged about it. Anyway they have made a video of it, but rather then have it on youtube so that people can see it and embedded it in blogs, it is intergrated into the FG website and [...]

From Fine Gael ( I would link to the release save the crap new website does not give you permalinks) Fine Gael Leader Enda Kenny TD will today (Wednesday) lead a Fine Gael delegation on a visit to Israel and the Palestinian Territories in order to witness the aftermath of the conflict between Hamas and [...]

The new Fine Gael website is live with it’s very striking BBC look and similar code. Will you tune into FG TV. In his video Enda says that we can talk to Fine Gael. Which is via the Air your view Email No Sign of any blogs on there yet. They have a donate section. [...]

leaked via Suzy the new website is currently housed at finegael.org. Minutes after Suzy leaked the url, Steph has done the background and it looks like the site is a basic cog of BBC.co.uk (which is clear if you look at the site). The CSS files hold the answers. Update Simon: The site is back [...]

The Irish Times reports that the Government is planning to backdate the doubled income levy rates to January 1st, rather than coming into play on May 1st as suggested on Budget day. According to the report PAYE workers wont be affected but a blended rate will be brought into place for those who are self-employed [...]

Michael Ring‘s speech didn’t quite get carried on the live feed, fortunately someone took a few minutes and put them on youtube. Including the paroxysms as he sent the crowd into the stratosphere. No one, not even Howard Dean, does the shout/yelp like Michael Ring.

The early morning session (the one after head office motions on candidate selection were moved to a delegate conference in the autumn) was chaired by Gay Mitchell Gay’s speech was typical of the man, all over the place. With metaphors about shooting fish in a barrel (missing and shooting the barrel to drown us) and [...]

At Citywest in a nice room with TV feed to conference (three floors below and a building away, will be heading down soon as the coffee and biccies are gone). Suzy, Lexia, Squid and Stephen are here so far – think there are more to come. Follow us on twitter over on the live blog. [...]

Is it just me or does something in the image seem wrong?

From the Irish Independent FINE Gael has formulated a radical €11bn stimulus plan for the economy which would see some of the State’s ‘crown jewels’ sold off to create green and hi-tech jobs. Now I thought they meant the actual Irish Crown Jewels which were robbed in 1907. But no they mean the ESB international [...]

Celebrity economists George Lee and Jim Power are both linked to running for Fine Gael in the Dublin South by-election to fill the seat vacated by the late Seamus Brennan. Jim Power instantly dismissed it, while George Lee isn’t even commenting. RTE dismissed it out of hand for him. Other notables that are mentioned in [...]