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

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 [...]

I guess this is part of the Brian Lenihan tour of uncomfortable media hotspots, a feature in today’s Guardian with Economics Editor Larry Elliot. The tone is remarkably conciliatory, cautious and even underwhelming.  Stark contrast to the irrepresible talk of green shoots, doom mongers and Lehman Brothers from the party when talking for domestic consumption. [...]

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 [...]

He is a clean green, David Geary, candidate in Dublin Central for the Greens. He just put up a video about dog poo on youtube and is handing out pooper scoopers to voters. Have a look for some ace dubbing to boot. Aww, cute doggies… Forget jobs. Think poo.

Is when you get one you recognise it and leave it at that. Dan Boyle this afternoon seems to have strayed past that line. Getting Brian Cowen to change his position from a willingness to ‘discuss with the Greens any concerns they have about the programme for Government’ to a commitment to sitting down and [...]

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 [...]

The Greens looking for the a renegotiating of the programme for government is their biggest chance ever to get their policy ideas implemented. They hold now the strongest card they will ever have over Fianna Fail and that is if they withdraw from power then FF face an election from which they may never recover. [...]

Dan Boyle spoke in Tralee today. The tone is very interesting. Here’s quotes pulled from the press release, my emphasis added… “There are too many unresolved issues. Too many policy errors remain that have not been admitted to, areas where responsibility has not been taken. The policy of pump priming the property boom has been [...]

Well, here comes the Bert. A stint as Mayor before a trip to the Aras? No harm to keeping his profile up. Either way, the government and John Gormley will be giving us another election next year as Dublin gets a directly elected mayor. Some details below the fold – what do you think?

For Europe, an effort to get back into parliament. @Deirdredeburca probably won’t be happy. She also dishes the dirt in a Hot Press interview. Former MEP Patricia McKenna has confirmed she is to quit the Green Party and run in the forthcoming European elections as an Independent candidate. Ms McKenna said she took the decision [...]

Deirde De Burca is offering €1,500 Euro in prize money to winners of her compitions. Yes €1,500. She is having 3 competitions; Best photo of another European City,  Best Slogan about Europe and Democracy and Best Green Business Idea, each with a prize of €500. Now considering that the Senator received no declared donations last year, is [...]

Update: They have a photo Shoot. What is it with politicans rugby and silly press releases.  Party unity has fallen apart over Saturday’s Leinster v Munster showdown.  The Green Party is deeply split ahead of this weekend’s Heineken Cup semi-final between Leinster and Munster in Croke Park. In a show of provincial disunity MEP candidates [...]

Update: The full list is available now from Taoiseach.gov.ie – 7 gone two in place for fifteen junior ministers.You might be interested in the speech that got McGuinness the sack. Interestingly there is now no junior minister for drug strategy despite their merging of the drug and alcohol strategy recently. Dept of Enterprise retains three [...]

  From Irish Times Green Party education spokesman Paul Gogarty has resigned his position in the wake of decisions on education taken at the party’s convention in Wexford at the weekend. Mr Gogarty is expected to make a statement at lunchtime but The Irish Times understands he has submitted his resignation. He is understood to be particularly [...]

The ScribbleLive based liveblog of the Fianna Fail Ard Fheis had been a fantastic success- with no advance coverage beyond a post on tuppenceworth and some (few) twitter posts it attracted quite large audiences. The #ffaf hashtag was, for a while, the fifth most popular topic on twitter as a whole. Gavin, who was reporting from Citywest on the day, found that the photographs he posted were attracting around a thousand views each very quickly.

The left the ground to Fianna Fail last week, whose midweek fail was followed by an Ard Fheis that was successful in parts (the email with dodgy link to own site and clunky language was fun too).