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

Michael McDowell’s statement that the Taoiseach needs to make a full public statement on the issue of public finances, comes on the heels of Trevor Sargent’s similar intervention. The opposition has looked positively frightened by the story. Its like a boiling kettle they are afraid to take off the hob for fear of burning their [...]

“I know your works: you are neither cold nor hot.
Would that you were cold or hot!
So, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot,
I will spew you out of my mouth.“
(Revelations, 3:15-16)
In Dante’s Inferno, at the threshold of Hell, lie abandoned the apathetic:- “That craven crew / Of angels who elected neither rebellion / [...]

Lovely weather we’re having, is it? I was up at 6:30 this morning to feed littlest his good morning bottle and as I opened the bedroom curtains I was elated to see the empty street bright with early morning sunshine. Not a cloud in the sky, a clear Californian blue. It’s the sort of weather [...]

On Tuesday I wrote about Bertie’s claim that part of the money he received in 1994 was used to settle a stamp duty bill. Well below the fold you can see a photo I found of Bertie in 1994 which shows just what he was reading around that time.

Bertie Ahern recently said that Ireland was the laughing stock of Europe for not having electronic voting. I have yet to come across anyone in Europe laughing about that. But I have come across people laughing at the Taoiseach calling an election and the Mahon tribunal getting stopped just before they talk about him.

Calls for Taoiseach to issue public statement
Ahern denies ‘prior knowledge’
General Election on 24 May - Official

According to the Irish Times today, Bertie claims that he spent £50,000 sterling on refurbishments, £30,000 sterling of which was the cash that Celia Larkin brought back from England - minus of course stamp duty.
But stamp duty only applies when there is a house purchase. Bertie didn’t buy the house, so he would not have [...]

The Irish Times begins the first full day of the election campaign with a story from the Mahon Tribunal. The Tribunal has been informed that Bertie’s bus driver on the night in Manchester (for I think it is he) gave £30,000 to Celia Larkin in cash.
The money was placed by Ms Larkin in an account [...]

If Sinn Féin wanted my vote, they would blowup the Toll booths on all the Irish toll roads. Particularly after NTR boosted the rate for autos to 1.70 Euro just before the Easter Bank weekend. After only 6 months in operation on the M7, this would make a 6% increase, and if that were to [...]

[MP3 from lofg.com]
- O’Callaghan & ors v Judge Alan Mahon & ors [2007] IESC 17 (30 March 2007 - Judgement of the Supreme Court, delivered by Denham J.)
- Mahon Tribunal: Tribunal of Inquiry into Certain Planning Matters and Payments
- Owen O’Callaghan v Mahon tribunal case: Quarryvale hearings to resume in April (The [...]

In a feature in today’s Daily Mail, Nicola Byrne interviews locals in fraudster Michael ‘The Stroke’ Fahy’s home town of Adrahan, Co.Galway, to see if his conviction has changed locals’ perceptions of him.
Unsurprisingly, it hasn’t.

Writing in the Irish Daily Mail today, Richard Waghorne quotes the judge who sentenced Galway County Councillor Michael “The Stroke” Fahy to prison for 12 months on fraud charges. “You have been declared a fraud”, the judge told the disgraced councillor.
Waghorne went on to make a far more important point:

How many years does it take to provide ‘a few more hospital beds’. Today Bertie used that line, while explaining why his government is giving away billions of Euros in Public lands to private hospital developers. His government has been in power for 12 years, and now he is planning to supply a few more [...]

Wagger is surprised that no one has written on IrishElection.com yet about Charles Haughey’s theft and embezzlement of at least €11m (accounted as €45m in modern terms by the Moriarty Tribunal).
The man famous for telling the Irish people to “tighten belts” during the economic and fiscal crises of the 1970s and 1980s—almost all created by [...]

Has any one noticed that the Irish Government has returned to the Silent Lie? That Stardust does not need to be investigated because no new evidence was found by the non-existent follow up investigations that never happened. That the nursing home reports are never publish so long as the bathroom tiles are fixed?
The fact [...]

I used to work as manager of one of a chain of stores in and around Dublin. If the MD ever went into a store and saw something he didn’t like, his reaction was always the same.
Right after giving the offending manager—yes, I’ll admit it was me a couple of times—a good bollocking, he would [...]