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

On this beautiful day, there seems to be a good deal of election gossip filling the news pages. Below the fold are the pick of the bunch, it looks like the two weeks back in the constituencies are coming to and end and the ramping up of the national campaign begins next week.

So the immigration debate has reared it’s head again in Ireland. With Enda Kenny thinking he is TD for Tennessee (all be it a Celtic Tennessee) and McDowell being and it pains me to say this, an utter twat.

Enda Kenny tried to kick up some dirt during the week by trying to throw the immigration debate back into centre stage, something which could be seen as Fine Gael’s attempt to prove itself to the centre-right/right.
As everyone, especially Michael McDowell, knows Fine Gael’s number two priority (perhaps even number one) is to squeeze the [...]

On the day that the government issued an embarrasing rehash of spending plans and flogged ideas, Enda Kenny decided to spend his time flying kites.
Last week, Bertie, McDowell, and Cowen got up in front of the nation and said ‘WE HAVE NO NEW IDEAS. OUR BALLS ARE UNGUARDED. WHY DON’T YOU HAVE A GOOD ‘AUL [...]

Article 44.2.2 of the constitution says “The State guarantees not to endow any religion.” This means that the state basically has no religion. However Enda Kenny disagrees. To him Ireland is a “Celtic and Christian country “. But before any ones brands Enda as Anti-immigrant he is not in fact he is the total [...]

The Indo has details of a survey about Muslim attitudes in Ireland. Some details:

73% believe they are fully integrated into Irish society, with 77% saying they feel accepted here.
More than a third—36%—would prefer Ireland to be ruled under Sharia law, while 37% would like Ireland to be governed as an Islamic state.

From RTE:
Workers from Romania and Bulgaria will still have to apply for work permits in Ireland even after their countries join the European Union on 1 January next year. The announcement was made this afternoon by Micheál Martin, Minister for Enterprise, Trade & Employment, who said they would be given preference over nationals from outside [...]

I saw something strange in Dublin on Sunday. I was walking by Trinity and this guy passed me with a couple of hurleys and wearing a Kerry jersey. The only reason I can come up with to explain this highly unusual sight was that the guy was an Arab and probably was not brought up [...]

From the CSO, last years immigrant total was the highest ever at 86,900. With over 2 Million people in employment is never been so good to come to Ireland. And it’s clearly good news for the government. I hate to ask though but what happens if/when it all starts deflating?

With immigration rearing its head again over Bulgaria and Romania joining the EU, a survey from the European Citizen Action Service is quiet interesting. It says that Romanian economic migrants tend to travel primarily to Italy (29%), Spain (22%), Germany (13%) and Hungary (6%), while Bulgarians have formed the largest immigrant communities in Greece (200,000), [...]

Sinn Fein’s Aengus Ó Snodaigh today accused the Government of planning to play the “race card” in the upcoming election.
Sinn Féin’s justice spokesperson Aengus Ó Snodaigh has accused the Government of being “ruthlessly committed to exploiting, and creating, fears over immigration to Ireland for electoral benefit”.
Hmm, excuse me lads but in fairness isn’t that basically [...]

The Irish Independent reports on the Government’s plans to introduce work permits for the 2 new accession states Romania and Bulgaria.

It looked for a while that immigration might come an issue in the next election. Especially with Pat Rabbitee’s 40 million poles comment. But since then it has dropped off the radar screens. However it has reared it’s head again. This time

A group of Afghan asylum seekers vowed today to starve themselves to death [...]

Late last week but strangely not at it’s conference Labour announced a plan to reach out to the Irish community abroad. This comes in the wake of the immigration debate in America which I am not going to get into the pros and cons of all that at the moment because that is an issue [...]