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

Here’s the text of Brian Cowen’s speech entitled “A Decade of Commemorations — Commemorating Our Shared History” to the Institute for British Irish Studies at UCD today.  There are various points to make.  One is that these speeches — and this is not Cowen’s fault — have adopted a psychobabble language since they are written [...]

There’s the old line about the Bourbons when they got back in power after Napoleon that “they had learned nothing and forgotten nothing”.  Then there’s Fianna Fail.  The Willie O’Dea confidence motion debate today was mercifully short because it showed a government that, after years of scandals and concerns about conduct in public office, has [...]

Update: Official Press Release here.
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In a decision sure to spark furious condemnation from “no” campaigners, the Broadcasting Commission of Ireland has announced new regulations on airtime set to grant the political-parties the vast majority of airtime during the campaign.
Broadcasters are not required to allocate exactly the same amount of time to both the Yes and [...]

Sinn Féin lost their third councillor since the June local elections on Saturday. Lousie Minihan, a Dublin City Councillor from the Ballyfermot/Drimnagh ward left the party, taking her seat with her. She told The Irish Times that she believed Sinn Fein was no longer focused on “ending British rule in Ireland and the establishment of [...]

Councilor Christy Burke has resigned from the Sinn Féin party. After more than thirty years of at times frayed relations with the party’s Dublin HQ he has stepped down taking his council seat with him.
Sinn Féin are calling on him not to make the seat independent, stating that he was elected on a Sinn Féin [...]

Early predictions from most of the mainstream media outlets have McDonald as the favourite. There is nothing is solid from the exit polls however – while they are perceived to be more trustworthy in Dublin than elsewhere – they are far from concrete. They say it’ll come down to who goes out first between the [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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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 [...]

While nothing to with the budget it is certainly worth noting. Recently the expenses of MPs have been big news in the UK. With Jacqui Smith getting the most heat. But Sinn Fein have also been caught up in it. From the Guardian
Sinn Féin’s five MPs each claimed £21,000 in second-home allowances from the UK parliament [...]

I guess lots of the bloggers are down at the blog Awards and have not got a chance to blog about the protests in Dublin  Alas I am not based in Ireland any more so can’t really talk about it as I can’t access the mood. I am sure many bloggers will be talking about [...]

ITs a good week for Red C to take the latest tracking poll for the Sunday Business Post. Markets are falling like stones (Friday has the potential to be another massive dead cat bounce) and the government don’t look to have stamped authority on many aspects of policy.

Stephen Collin’s story in the Irish Times today is one of those ones that feeds into a zeitgeist. Political leaders who have let the Social Partnership talks slip, are in charge of an economic slowdown and on 13 weeks of summer holidays receive their final pay increase today.
TDs WILL receive a pay rise of some [...]

Even before the Irish people’s democratic decision to reject the fatally-flawed Lisbon Treaty, (which would have deepened the democratic-deficit in Europe still further), the source of Libertas funding was a bane of “yes” campaigners. To the elite, the possibility of the ‘mainstream’ parties being so decisively outspent by this upstart pro-business [...]