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

Peruse the diagram above. The green/yellow states are those voting with DREs with a voter-verified paper-trail (VVPR) (except in Tennessee, Colorado and Maryland where the relevant legislation has been passed but doesn’t come into force this year) and with/without (respectively) a paper audit-trail. The red-states are those requiring neither a [...]

The Irish Times has a very good editorial today. The implications of universality.
At its heart are two very different ways of delivering State benefits and services. One way is to make those services - health, education, and welfare benefits - universally available. The other is to target them at those who are most in need [...]

Yesterday, in the aftermath of the climbdown regarding the Medical Cards fiasco, I read a post on the weblog of Green Party Justice Spokesperson Ciarán Cuffe, which dealt with the Medical Cards issue.
After reading the post, I gave him my view of the Fianna Fáíl / Green coalition, and put some questions to him and [...]

That’s the deal now on offer to those workers making just above the minimum wage.  RTE on the inevitable income levy climbdown –
The Government has decided that people earning up to the minimum wage of €17,540 per year will be exempt from the 1% income levy announced in the Budget.
However, anyone earning above [...]

One of the biggest stories about the state of the Irish Economy came out on Friday to little notice. 
THE IRISH Financial Services Regulatory Authority has instructed accountants PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) to assess the extent to which the banks are delaying the collection of interest payments on loans to builders and property developers.
If banks are not collecting [...]

I’m talking out of turn here politically, but if anyone is interested in a practical solution to the over 70s medical card fiasco, there’s my tuppence worth.
I might be asking a rather obvious question here but if the GPs charge the state €640 (the figure itself isn’t really relevant at the moment) for giving people [...]

Fianna Fail have in their defence against  James Reilly Fine Gael’s spokesman on health attacks on the medical card for pensioners debacle. Have mentioned that James Reilly was head of the IMO when Fianna Fail negotiated the deal with them which was very generous (Or so Fianna Fail say). This seems to be trying to discredit  James Reilly [...]

Consider the following hypothetical situation.  Two people both aged, say 76, with identical current incomes (e.g. state contributory pension plus a little deposit interest).  Both now have medical cards.  One got it under the pre-2002 means test due to lower income in some previous year than the other person.The other person got it under the [...]

Jim McDaid is on Newstalk going against the current Medical Card Fiasco seemingly putting the blame squarly at the PD’s or should I say Mary Harney.  Saying that Mary has taken it the wrong direction. He also seemed to indicate that he will vote against the bill.  This is again Fianna Fail playing its own [...]

Brian Cowen is talking to the EU Legal Service about drafting opt-outs and protocols to make the Lisbon Treaty “palatable to the Irish public” according to Jamie Smyth and others this morning.
Cowen, who said the France, which is the current president of the EU, had also asked the Council of Ministers’ legal services “to see [...]

Mary Harney, Mary Coughlan, Maire Hoctor.  That was one of the lines in the Dail this morning.  Here is the Oireachtas record of the debate on the Order of Business.  The Order is typically agreed in a couple of minutes but an unusually unified opposition turned into a scrum on the medical card for over 70s [...]

While there will be intense competition to pick out the single worst feature of the budget, there’s a good argument that it’s the income levy.  To cut a long story short, it’s a display of Brian Lenihan’s utter lack of confidence in the tax system.  Why?

Detail is a little light at the moment, bankers pay and bonuses look like being tied to good behaviour though. Will we see departures like those in the UK?

Over at the Property Pin they have been digging away at the proposals in yesterday’s budget for affordable housing provision. The website set up (homechoiceloan.ie) appears to suggest the government is steppign into subprime mortgages for those refused by banks and building societies as well as stipulating the houses purchased come from the 35,000-50,000 new, [...]

Suzy brings up an interesting point on the White Paper/Estimates and the budget cut for government agencies. Mergers and abolitions are taking place in 41 agencies and budget cuts/logistic sharing is the order of the day as well.
However some have fared better than others.
The Equality Authority’s budget has been cut by 43% and the Irish [...]