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

Missed this earlier today but didn’t spot it picked up here. Jamie Smyth got his hands on the confidential part of the Eurobarometer survey into the Lisbon result. The findings are interesting – also interesting they weren’t released. I would have guessed at who leaked were it not coming from Brussels correspondent. LISBON: party supporters’ [...]

If it weren’t for the fact that we are in the middle of an international crisis of global proportions in the uncharted waters of unpredictability (ed – that is enough hyperbole), the government would be getting covered in other forms of excrement. Not least due to the admission that:  ”high proportion of existing schools are [...]

The first poll after the Lisbon result comes with little by way of surprise. The Sunday Business Post/Red C poll finds the Irish electorate looks unlikely to have engaged in a mass volte face with regard to the major parties after Lisbon. Fianna Fail 40% (unchanged) Fine Gael 25% (-3)

In a great day for Irish and European democracy, the Irish people, on a higher turnout than Nice II, rejected the illegitimate and anti-democratic Lisbon Treaty by 53.4% to 46.6%. In doing so, they have struck a blow for freedom and against remote, unaccountable and undemocratic rule by unelected bureaucrats in Brussels. They have shown [...]

The report today from Central Mental Hospital Carers’ Group, the Irish Mental Health Coalition and Schizophrenia Ireland about the desirability of moving the Central Mental Hospital from Dundrum to Thornton Hall emphasised two major things for me – the first political and relevant, the second trivial, unoriginal and selfinvolved.

Cowen’s political positioning of the government is very much the slowly slowly affair befitting of a month in May. The cabinet reshuffles were quite deft, keeping the big names happy but at arms length from a putsch while the junior ministries gave the backbenches more hope than Bertie ever dared. It is a mark of [...]

By 50% + to 49% + Congratulations to Ciaran Cannon on a personal level but asking the obvious question but how did the votes really play out? Because that is what will determine if the party unites behind him or goes its separate ways. I acknowledge that I’m guessing here but if I’m wrong about [...]

Perhaps out of worry that the High Court will not find in his favour after tomorrow’s case or perhaps out of that deep-seated predisposition to change his mind more often than the weather, Ahern is widely reported as considering only giving sparse detail to the Dail tomorrow. I am not sure we would have known [...]

So he was for turning after all. I didn’t take long for Ahern to turn ‘I will not be making a statement’ into ‘I will in fact, ah, be making a statement’. The Indo reports this morning that he will make use of Dail time on Wednesday to make a speech which will attempt to [...]

Noel Ahern doesn’t give much weight to John Gormley‘s worries aired yesterday and captured here by Green Ink. He reckons that Gormley was only following Harney and anyway he is Minister with responsibility for tribunals so should be keeping counsel. Well it is only “small money” we are talking about here so perhaps the partners [...]

Irish Election: The dog barks? Greens join calls for Ahern statement

The Irish Independent revealed today that the Taoiseach will tell the Mahon tribunal that he converted his salary cheques into sterling, and then back into punts, before lodging them into the three accounts he kept at the Permanent TSB branch in Drumcondra. This is in response to Grainne Carruth’s devastating evidence to the Mahon Tribunal [...]

It strikes one as serendipity – for the opposition at least – that the Dail debates a motion on the three reports from last week into Port Laoise, the one that gave rise to the Naughton letter and entered ‘systems-failure’ in the political lexicon by failing patients in a grotesque multiplicity of manners while the [...]

This post actually started a while back, the last time Bertie mentioned we would be tightening our belts this year, I decided to finish it because he mentioned it again yesterday. We know that the US is as good as in a recession, their central bank doesnt seem to have much capacity to stall the [...]

“To me, services for cancer patients are worse now than they were seven years ago in the midlands” … “I am writing out of a deep sense of despair and frustration…I have written to senior management about seven times in the last two years…outlining how we would deal with the problem…all to no avail” James [...]

The Progressive Democrat‘s new leader should be in office in little under two months time, at present it looks like Cannon and O’Malley but there may well be one or more additional figures to go forward. Nominations for the post will close on March 5. Edit: To add the procedure for voting will be a [...]