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

It’s been a while since I’ve brought you news on a Bertie earner – being the recession and all I suppose times are tough for the Iar Taoiseach and the way he might scratch a few euro to make up for his pension levy losses.
However news reaches us today of Bertie Ahern’s signing as [...]

Dan Boyle is on the war path again. A statement released through the Green Party communications office following his speech at the MacGill Summer School today said…
Addressing the MacGill Summer School in Glenties, Co Donegal, the Green Party Finance spokesperson said progress required a prompt end to the culture of ‘No Blame – No Shame.’ [...]

Apropos only 19 of 145 judges taking a pay cut, Niall Collins TD for Fianna Fail in Limerick wants a referendum:
“This group of elite untouchables should be subjected to the regular procedures administering the pay of higher civil servants. In the modern day being protected by the Constitution is simply not good enough given that [...]

Interesting Bloomberg News decades-long perspective on the Irish economy.  Among the quotes –
“I can’t remember anyone at any level telling me, ‘The banks are giving hundreds of millions of euros to developers, and they’re borrowing this at short rates, so if anything happens to them, they’re caught,’” says Bertie Ahern, 57, prime minister from 1997 [...]

Skin and hair should fly tonight at the Fianna Fail Dublin Central convention at the Skylon. They pick candidates from Maurice Ahern, Tom Stafford (both involved with el Berto) and Mary Fitzpatrick, who was royally shafted by the Ahern camp last time out as they threw their weight behind Cyprian Brady at the last minute, [...]

The honors cannot stop falling upon the head of our dear Taoiseach. Not alone is he honoured in Latin America, part of a worldwide bureau of speakers and an in demand figure for global events, Bertie Ahern is to take up a post at NUI Maynooth as Honorary Adjunct Professor of Mediation and Conflict Intervention [...]

For one thing, AIB is a lot more accident-prone.  There was accidental overcharging that the Financial Regulator might have known about before they said they did.  There was that awkward routing of Goodbody’s transactions in AIB shares through the well-known financial centre of Nevis.  There was those accidental hundreds of millions dollars lost in their [...]

Today its up to a once-off £30,000 which the Tribunal put to Ahern he received from developer Owen O Callaghan after a March 1994 meeting about the tax status of Quarryvale and Blanchardstown shopping centres. When he looks around at the empty press gallery and reads headlines of economic woe, he must think it was [...]

Today’s Humbert Summer schools has the opposition berating Cowen and attempting to frame the narrative for the upcoming election run-in. In her speech (wonderfully titled Brian Cowen and the Riddle of Cleopatra’s Nose)
Then, Brian Cowen enjoyed huge public and media approval and was received in his home county as a conquering hero. That has all [...]

As Bertie Ahern does his screen-test for a future job on The Sunday Game or Late Late, he was quick to defend his handling of the economic downturn. Unemployment now at 5.1% and construction workers falling like flies – and little re-training to give them a hand up.
The Dublin Central TD, who quit office in [...]

Is there a curse of Mahon? Added to the list of deceased on the witness lists comes today’s announcement that Albert Reynolds has “cognitive impairment” and cannot give evidence to the Tribunal. Albert has had a strange twilight to political career, having inadvertedly given his name to the standard libel defence in English [...]

What? The price of a house on two offices? On a refurbishment?
The space needed renovation and cleaning, and according to figures obtained by RTÉ News, the OPW spent approximately €220,000 to do this and to fit it out with furniture. The work took around three weeks to complete.

The first poll after the Lisbon result comes with little by way of surprise. The Sunday Business Post/Red C poll finds the Irish electorate looks unlikely to have engaged in a mass volte face with regard to the major parties after Lisbon.
Fianna Fail 40% (unchanged)
Fine Gael 25% (-3)

“Ahern said he was not really a gambling man, but he enjoyed attending festive race meetings when he had the opportunity.”
So reported the Irish Times at the end of December last year when Bertie Ahern was at the Leopardstown races. Despite that, he appears to have been quite successful at the old gee-gees.

The Drumcondra mafia, that is.  Can anyone keep track of the last two days’ Mahon revelations, let alone reconcile them with earlier testimony?  In particular, we have learned that it looks like Celia Larkin was never intended to be out of pocket, at least not anytime soon, on the loan that she got to buy [...]

Does any of this sound familiar? –
Not all of the money was a gift, New York businessman Morris Talansky told the court.  Some of the cash “donations” handed over to Olmert were loans, which he expected to be repaid. “Famous last words,” Talansky jokingly told the court when he explained that the money was never [...]