Slugger’s Irish Budget Live Blog We’re kicking off shortly, if you want to follow the live stream from the Dail Chamber, you can pick it here, or at RTE.ie/live … Come in and join the conversation… I’ll be dipping in and out, but Mack should be around for most of the proceedings… Mick FealtyMick is founding editor of Slugger. He has written papers on the impacts of the Internet on politics and the wider media and is a regular guest …
Tomorrow is budget day in Dublin. The two independent TDs the government needs to force it through the Dail, Jackie Healy Rae and Michael Lowry are to decide today whether they support the government. Currently the government appears to be lavishing them with the kind of attention Government backbenchers can only dream of… Fianna Fail TD Ned O’Keeffe said it makes party backbenchers “look like doormats”.”I can’t understand how two people are going to decide the future of the country …
With Mick and many others doing serious political analysis based on polls and the DWS by-election, I thought’d I’d drag up some old election results for the discussion. While one seat or poll does not make an electoral summer, SF members clearly feel the sun on their backs and few would argue with them. If their difficulties with transfers diminish and they do poll over 10%, how far could they go? One indicator might be looking at the return for …
The Liveblog is still running but Sinn Fein’s Pearse Doherty has now been declared TD for Donegal South West. In a stunning performance he was elected slightly under quota as the two remaining candidates were unable to catch him. Perhaps the most encouraging factor for SF is Doherty was collecting transfers at high levels throughout all counts? Interestingly his final tally of 16,897, on a reduced turnout, isn’t far off the 20K that would have seen two TDs elected in …
The Dundalk Democrat reports that Sinn Féin TD for Louth, Arthur Morgan, has announced that he will not be seeking re-election to the Dáil in the next Irish General Election. I hope it wasn’t anything we might have said… From the statement by Arthur Morgan on the Sinn Féin website. I have served two terms now as a Sinn Féin TD for Louth. It has been a great honour to represent the people of this county and it has been a …
There is a part you that has to admire the cool with with Biffo and the boys of Fianna Fail take their knocks. Having your whole fiscal policy dictated by a virtual committee of the ECB and the IMF and fronting the toughest budget in many generations takes some doing. But as Miriam Lord notes in today’s Irish Times, the loss of Jim McDaid was already priced in by his erstwhile party colleagues. With the Greens keeping their nerve and …
As the lengthy Dáil summer gives way to a new session that is largely a preamble to the next budget on December 7th, there are ominous signs of unease from a government whose electors are gripped by a palpable fear and loathing of what havoc the electorate are going to wreak upon them when finally given the opportunity. The arithmetic of the current Dáil Éireann sees the government supported by 70 FF, 6 Greens and a ramshackle coalition of 8 ‘independents’ largely drawn from the wider FF gene …
