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

Laszlo Kovacs is EU Tax comissioner and a big fan of the CCCTB he announced today that plans will continue to bring forward proposals and an imapct assesment of the CCCTB to the French Presidency. It is possibly as much a function of French will as his own, Sarko is well miffed that we wrecked [...]

Wednesday’s Irish Independent is a case-in-point for those of us who suspect the press of siding with the Establishment against the people over Lisbon. With jobs losses growing by the week, they cynically attempt to link the issue to the possibility of a “No” vote to the June 12th referendum. This article is pure facile [...]

Dublin City Council is considering the merits of imposing a “tourist tax” of €1 per night on beds in hotels, hostels and B&Bs in the city in order to raise additional revenue.
Ignoring the fact that this is the taxation equivalent of licking your plate clean after large a steak dinner, there are many questions that [...]

So State may be paying pensions to 8,000 deceased people. now according to the article a pension is €223 a week. Or for 8000 people for a year €92,778,000. Is it time we had a Minister for Waste because whoever is doing the checking is not doing a very good job.Maybe with a green budget [...]

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 postal [...]

Ahern to challenge aspects of Mahon
Connell withdraws bid to stop files examined

After the 2007 Budget last December, Brian Cowen was called Santa Claus by those quick witted subeditors eager to fill a snappy headline. After all, the surprisingly large tax returns, mainly provided by the rampantly inflated housing market allowed him to provide a bumper ‘giveaway’ budget.
This year of course, with credit crunches and a collapsing [...]

€32,471.40: The average annual earnings of an adult male industrial worker in Ireland.
€38,000: Bertie Ahern’s pay raise for 2008.
Sources below.

This morning the pensions green paper was announced, with its own fancy dandy website. At the moment I am working through the executive summary. Its interesting that they went with a green paper on this one, this government has not been the best at consultation and has a very low record of consultation on policy. [...]

This post arose out of a discussion with Simon on Michael Taft’s C’mon Ye Know-Nothings, (18 September 2007). Fianna Fáil has produced an abundance of tax incentives to aid the construction industry. One of these schemes, the Rural Renewal Scheme 1999 (PDF FILE, 887KB), is set to run until 31 July 2008. According to the [...]

Fianna Fail certainly read their Sun Tzu. The legendary author of the ancient classic, ‘The Art of War’, stated that
To defeat your enemy without fighting is best.
Yes, indeed. Fianna Fail won the economics debate long before the last election began. And they hardly had to fire a PR shot. Labour’s Pat Rabbitte TD, suggested [...]

In the past ten years the construction of houses and other dwellings has far outstripped demand, yet prices have grown at unprecedented rates.
From 1996 to 2006 the number of occupied households in Ireland (dwellings with one or more residents), increased by 346,300 units. At the same time, 611,961 new dwellings were constructed. This leaves a [...]

(just a quick observation on the emerging result which can probably be filed under the “state the obvious” category)
This election’s campaign was laden with criticism from many who felt that there was no choice for voters. On issues like income tax, stamp duty, hospital beds and Gardaí numbers this was largely true but it is [...]

Rumble in Ranelagh

One of the worst acts that this government has done is said that it will cover much of the catholic’s church’s cost in clerical sex abuse compensation deals with the liability of the catholic church being capped at 128 million euros. While we the people who did little wrong will possibly be forced to [...]

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 [...]