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In a carefully calculated Friday afternoon news dump which will be lost in all the financial excitement, Minister for Justice Dermot Ahern has added at least 6 months to his earlier timetable for a Victims’ Rights Bill. This is a sequel to his killing of Alan Shatter’s private member’s bill on the same subject back [...]
Fine Gael are criticising Brian Lenihan for a bit of news dumping today. The annual report of the Morris Tribunal into Garda misconduct in Donegal was released today amidst all the furore surrounding the ascension of Brian Cowen to the post of Taoiseach and perhaps Lenihan’s own promotion to Tanaiste. They have a point, this [...]
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 [...]
When asked about stopping crime Fine Gael seem to be one of the main advocates of harsher measures. They want to be the ones tough on crime and the stunt and lets be honest it was a stunt of putting the Army on the street is the ace in tough crime measures. People imagine that [...]
Fine Gael’s Charlie Flanagan raised the idea of using the Army to fight gangland crime. This is a bit loopy. Many countries have higher crime rates indeed most have higher rates and do not resort to putting the Army on the streets. Let alone the whole argument that this is not what they army is [...]
Drug allegations raised in the Dáil
Fine Gael TD Simon Coveney asked Bertie Ahern if he was aware that a journalist had claimed an unnamed Minister had admitted taking drugs on a regular basis.Mr Coveney asked if the Taoiseach was planning to call in his Ministers to ask them if the claim was true.He read out [...]
When I saw this headline (Sinn Féin condemn shooting of Garda) in the Party news section of this site. I thought to myself. Oh my god could this be true could this finally be Sinn Fein standing up like any party would and condemning the murder of Gerry McCabe. Alas no.
Sinn Féin [...]
Speaking at the launch of the Merchants Quay Ireland 2006 report, Junior Minister for Drug Strategy Pat Carey suggested the government may look at implementing a needle exchange programme nationally. The programme seems prompted by the volume which the smaller Merchants Quay project deals with. Last year nearly 40,000 visits to the programme were logged [...]
Brian Lenihan has been a man willing to walk in and out of the spotlight, look at his low profile adopted viz the Rostas family. Today though, the Justice Minister is talking about tackling our drinking culture, a theme similarly associated with his predecessor’s ‘cafe-bar’ proposal. The Minister suggested today that the government would be [...]
Pat Carey was talking today about plans in the programme for government to make registration of mobile phones compulsory. One wonders first how this would be enforced short of making the mobile companies responsible for the registration.
He agreed though that this would pose issues for privacy and civil liberties but the need to fight crime [...]
I have been saying it here for a while now.
Ireland is the least violent country in Europe, according to a new study by the World Health Organisation. The research compared murder and assault rates across 27 European countries. It found that Finland has 1.96 killings per 100,000 people, while the Scottish rate is 1.75. In [...]
Ok so we lost Joe. And we miss him. We really do. At the Dail yesterday they all gave him a nod. Tony Gregory said the place wouldn’t be the same. It won’t. It will. But it won’t.
Fianna Fail are still in charge but Fine Gael’s muscles have gotten some electoral steroids. How hard will [...]
New Earswick was a 1000 house village near York in the UK. It was built by the Joseph Rowntree foundation. (Yes the same Rowntree’s as Rowntree’s Fruit Pastilles) In an effort to make people feel safer in the community they started to introduce community policing in an effort to make the people feel safer and [...]
What was that about? Were they talking about Afghanistan?
One of the perceptions is that the country is awash with crime that we are a gangland mecca with the highest crime in Europe. And many people seem to believe it. Fintan O’Toole has a good piece on this in the Irish Times today(subs regd) and how crime is not rising an awful lot and [...]
Also known as Saturday’s Irish Times. The story most politicians and backroomers will chew over this morning is the dramatic figures which suggest nearly 3/4 of the electorate will not pay more tax in order to fund services. The data prior to this from Red C polls in the Business Post had the figure at [...]
techPresident – The Future of Campaign Technology: The Ground Game
Irish Parties looking at learning online and database lessons from Obama could do worse than bear this post in mind. Almost as soon as the election is over, improvements and evolution are making some parts redundant and others essential. Get your campaign an i-phone for everyone? Might be better than printing flyers, it goes to show how parties, if they take it seriously, need to keep ahead of the wave - not just follow.
Colman at the EuroTrib give his reasoning on why Lisbon is dead. The Government's incapable handling of the budget cuts are the nail in the coffin.
Fine Gael’s Leo Varadkar offers his view on how the SBP Opinion Poll would translate in an election.
Think tank: Time for democracy to click into place
Dan Sullivan gets himself into The Sunday Times, calling for the internet to connect citizens to a more meaningful democracy. Its an argument I agree with wholeheartedly myself. Have a read and let him know what you think.
Colm Burke MEP reckons that we need to get honest and tell people we will be holding a second Lisbon Vote in Oct 2009 with protocols desigend to secure a yes vote.
