Republic – Page 37 – Slugger O'Toole

Government coalition negotiations (continuning updates)…

Mick Fealty on October 9, 2009, 7:18 pm

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Again, apologies for the outage, we ARE working on it… In the meantime, we’re keeping an ear to ground for whether the Greens have been able to agree a new Programme for Government ahead of a scheduled meeting of the party’s convention tomorrow where they have to get 75% 2/3 approval to get it past… Late last night, Ciaran Cuffe blogged that failure to agree would have seen himself and his colleagues head into a General Election that would almost …

How did the Ceann Comhairle’s confidential conversations end up in a government memo?

Mick Fealty on October 8, 2009, 7:12 pm

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There have been a lot of angry voices (almost all of them Fianna Fail) on the air since the putative demise of John O’Donoghue. Now Harry McGee has seen a memo which throws some detailed light on Eamon Gilmore’s manoeuvring before opening the trapdoor under Mr O’Donoghue the other day… What’s remarkable about it is that this “internal memo prepared for Government” contains confidential details of what passed in two telephone conversations between the Ceann Comhairle and the Leader of …

NAMA – “The Only Show in Town or Criminal Theft?”

Mick Fealty on October 8, 2009, 2:24 pm

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The next Leviathan is going to go on tour out of Dublin… The subject is just the next but one nightmare on Fianna Fail’s growing nightmare list… NAMA… A scheme which Joseph Stiglitz accused the bankers of robbing the taxpayer. His recommendation: ‘re-privatisation’ (in other words, what the Swedes did: nationalisation). Here’s the blurb: The Government has proposed a National Assets Management Agency as a solution to the banking crisis. Its supporters describe is as “the only show in town” …

Oireachtas auditor departs a hot parliamentary kitchen that’s only going to get hotter…

Mick Fealty on October 8, 2009, 1:44 pm

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And as if to underscore the Greens internal pitch to reform government, along comes Tom O’Higgins, Chair of the Oireachtas Commission’s Audit Committee with a letter in the Irish Times saying he’s going over concerns about the way the Commission has dealt with his complaint. That would be the same overall committee chaired by John O’Donoghue that the Minister for Finance thought Mr Gilmore should have taken his complaint to (rather than the other party leaders in the house)… Since …

What does this crisis mean for the future of Irish democracy?

Mick Fealty on October 7, 2009, 5:54 pm

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Irishelection.com is asking all the right questions of this crisis… As Cian notes (and it is worth following a few of their internal backlinks just to see the depth and quality of some of the debate over there during the last few days and weeks)… Yes, JOD needs to go, yes he is sacrificial and yes he is an egregious example of wasteful expense. Yet the whole system is screwed up. Take a look at thestory.ie – they have documents …

“This is not a crime in Ireland, or even a misdemeanour.”

Pete Baker on October 7, 2009, 3:28 pm

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In the Irish Times, Miriam Lord’s sketch of events in the Dáil yesterday, which led to the promise of Ceann Comhairle John O’Donoghue’s resignation, is, as always, worth a read. But it’s Frank McNally’s Irishman’s Diary which gets closest to the actualité. I HAVEN’T seen the charge formally levelled against him yet anywhere. But it seems to me that what John O’Donoghue stands accused of, fundamentally, is that on a specified number of dates between about 2005 and 2009, he …

Gilmore comes out from the shadows over O’Donoghue…

Mick Fealty on October 7, 2009, 2:11 pm

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The quiet that greeted Labour leader Eamon Gilmore when he made his big play in the Dail yesterday and set the agenda for the John O’Donoghue’s rather hurried and undignified departure from Office of Ceann Comhairle. In one deft move (having given Fianna Fail leader Brian Cowen enough rope to hang himself with) this intervention lead to the issuing of JOD’s announcement of his pending resignation at just after 10 last night… Forget the rights and wrongs of the reasons …

John O’Donoghue offers Fine Gael and Labour whips to go next week…

Mick Fealty on October 7, 2009, 2:17 am

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Alan Shatter has just told RTE’s Late Debate that the Ceann Comhairle John O’Donoghue has offered Fine Gael and Labour whips office to go next week… He is now following Sinn Fein’s call for JOD to resign… The detail of the expenses story is the killer… apparently… Detail brought to the wider world by Gavin and latterly Mark Coughlan and their good work at thestory.ie with follow-ups from Politics.ie… Is this Ireland’s first internet-driven political scalp? UPDATE: JOD has issued …

Supreme Court grants ACC’s appeal against High Court’s decision on Zoe’s second bite of cherry

Pete Baker on October 6, 2009, 9:48 pm

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An iol report notes the latest (and final?) twist in the long-running saga of the Liam Carroll controlled Zoe Group, which owes €1.2 billion, “The ruling clears the way for a liquidator to begin selling off the companies’ assets to allow ACC bank recoup €136m owed to it.” And the RTÉ report confirms Chief Justice John Murray said the companies in their first examinership application had consciously and deliberately withheld from the court information which was available to them or …

Money well spent?

Pete Baker on October 6, 2009, 5:35 pm

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The Irish Times has the self-declared amounts spent by the various parties and groups on the Lisbon II campaign. AT LEAST €3.5 million was spent by the main groups campaigning for and against the Lisbon Treaty, while the Referendum Commission spent under €4 million. Political parties said they spent about €1.47 million, including contributions from European Parliament groups, while various civil society groups and corporations revealed spending of about €2 million. From the IT report The cost: what the main …

Irish cops win Ig Nobel prize for literature…

Belfast Gonzo on October 5, 2009, 12:00 pm

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CONGRATULATIONS go to An Garda Siochana, for the Irish police service has won the prestigious Ig Nobel Prize for Literature at Harvard University in Cambridge, USA. The award was won “for writing and presenting more than fifty traffic tickets to the most frequent driving offender in the country – Prawo Jazdy – whose name in Polish means ‘Driving Licence’.” The aim of the offbeat awards – handed out by real Nobel Laureates – is to honour achievements that “first make …

“Hopefully, it will lead to further discussion of the issues..”

Pete Baker on October 5, 2009, 12:48 am

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RTÉ’s CSÍ series is about to visit a topic that generated more heat than light the last time it was discussed – and in 2004 Mick noted an even earlier discussion. On Monday 5th October, 7.30pm, RTÉ 1, CSÍ will look “at the killing by the IRA of 13 West Cork protestants over four days in April 1922.” Eoghan Harris, one of the participants in the programme, has written about it here. And there’s a contested wikipedia entry – Dunmanway …

David Cameron set to confound his critics over Lisbon…?

Mick Fealty on October 3, 2009, 11:28 pm

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Labour Matters compares David Cameron’s 2007 pledge (in The Sun) to give the people of the UK a referendum come what may, and this morning’s presser from campaign headquarters which shows the leader of the Conservative party. They rather leap on Paul Waugh’s conclusion that the first gives ‘Honest Dave’ no wriggle room: “Today, I will give this cast-iron guarantee: If I become PM, a Conservative government will hold a referendum on any EU treaty that emerges from these negotiations.? …

Lisbon Essay (30): The least impact upon the Irish Constitution of any Treaty ever voted on…

Mick Fealty on October 1, 2009, 8:21 pm

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Ciarán Toland is a barrister (so we’ve given him a bit more space to make his case). In this, essay he lays out why he thinks the Lisbon Treaty has taken on a significance in Irish law that barely reflects insignificance in real terms. It lies primarily in the proposal to give the EU (previously three pillar multiple personality) and single legal personality of its own. Much else, he concludes is moving the furniture around: “…the Lisbon Treaty has the …

Sinn Féin Councillor’s ‘No’ protest “juvenile” – Adams

Pete Baker on October 1, 2009, 8:15 pm

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Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams has chosen solidarity with his northern counterpart, the out-going SDLP leader Mark Durkan, over party loyalty in the “partitionist nonsense” row – when a southern SF councillor-led group disrupted a joint-press conference with the Irish Labour Party. From today’s Irish News [subs req] The West Belfast MP was openly critical of councillor Tomas Sharkey and other party members who have been accused of disrupting a pro-Lisbon Treaty press conference hosted by the SDLP and the …

Murdoch soft peddling on Lisbon…

Mick Fealty on October 1, 2009, 7:59 pm

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Over at Comment is Free I argue that the innate (small ‘c’) conservativism* of the Murdoch press seems to have left them curiously ‘unmanned’ in their Euroscepticism this time out with Lisbon… Which suggests his Irish readership is not as passionate about voting no as it was last year… * A conservatism that does not seem to stretch to the WSJ Europe, for a serious paper that sells poorly in Europe, its Eurosceptic line is not helping win readers. Mick …

Referenda and the Phantom People who act like enemies of democracy…

Mick Fealty on October 1, 2009, 2:44 pm

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Not everyone I approached for a Lisbon essay had the time to give us the full text for an article. One such was Professor John Keane of the University of Westminster and author of The Life and Death of Democracy… These are his shorthand thoughts on the usefulness of Referenda in general and their relationship with chambers of elected representatives…From Professor John Keane If the vote goes against the ratification of the Lisbon Treaty then this will undoubtedly add to …

Lisbon Essay (27): If it’s No, Europe will simply find a way to move on without us…

Mick Fealty on October 1, 2009, 2:30 pm

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Dan O’Brien, senior Europe editor at the Economist Intelligence Unit in London, posts from Berlin where he is covering the aftermath of the Germany election. He takes a sounding of insider opinion on Ireland and Lisbon, in several of Europe’s major capitals. The general assumption is that Irish voters will, as they did with Nice, change their minds in tomorrow’s poll. Most negative opinion is constellated around Paris and Berlin. In brief, that negativity centres around a disbelief that a …

What’s the real difference between Ireland and Iceland?

Mick Fealty on October 1, 2009, 1:14 pm

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In the race regain competitiveness, the critical difference is Iceland’s capacity to devalue its currency. The result? Iceland’s unit labour costs have fallen by 29% over the past 12 months, whilst Ireland’s dropped by only 4.3%. The FT’s Brussels blog: …the hard truth is that Ireland – like fellow eurozone members Italy, Greece and Spain – has a long and hard road ahead to claw back its competitiveness. And this is a lesson with even broader implications for Europe. For …

Reform in Ireland Can Start with a Yes to Lisbon…

Mick Fealty on September 30, 2009, 9:35 pm

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Last year Naoise Nunn was one of a small but hard working Libertas team which basically took on and bested the Yes campaign over the first Lisbon Treaty Referendum. This year he is voting yes. The common motivation between this year and last is that he wants to see substantial political reform, both in Ireland and Europe. He explains below the fold:By Naoise Nunn I campaigned against the Lisbon Treaty last time on the basis that a better deal was …