It is important, generally, to try and not get personal when it comes to the people who govern us. For the most part, they are doing their best. Being wrong, as they regularly are is a human fault, not one that is specific to one party, or one person. Politicians want to be remembered well, […]
We already knew or should have known that we have the worst form of government ‘except for all the alternatives that have ever been tried’, as Winston Churchill put it. Sometimes it works better than other times. Sometimes, it is not the concept itself that is found wanting but the manner of its application. But […]
A great scoop in the independent by privacy reporter Ken Foxe: Details of the lump sums, pensions and termination pay for individual TDs and senators will no longer be made public following a decision by Oireachtas authorities. The payments have been published by Leinster House for more than a decade without issue. However, the Oireachtas […]
There are probably two things one might say about Mary Lou McDonald’s claim to the Sunday Independent that given the chance, she’d have been in the IRA, armed to the teeth and taking potshots at lads from Bolton who were unlucky enough to get posted to Northern Ireland. If you’re the anti-SF type, there’s the […]
Something you don’t see every day: A politician who was explicitly defenestrated by the voters from her seat in the Dáil, back in the chamber just a few weeks later, taking questions like nothing had happened: Here’s something you don’t see every day – a non-TD taking questions in the Dáil. Katherine Zappone presenting this […]
There was, in case you missed it, an opinion poll at the weekend, in the Sunday Business Post. Fine Gael is once again the most popular party in Ireland. Sinn Fein is roughly standing still from where it was at the recent election. Fianna Fáil is, well, hoping that the lockdown won’t prevent a priest […]
In the midst of terrible unemployment news, and rising death tolls, and a shortage of testing, and a shortage of protective equipment, and general awfulness, it’s actually a relief to know that some things are as stupid as they normally are. Here’s the latest row, courtesy of Virgin Media’s Gav Reilly, who really does an […]
Ireland is progressing. It is moving from a dark, priest-infested isle into the light of modernity. That is what we are told. Day after day, week after week – the Irish media and political establishment assures us that as the hour hand moves forward so too does Ireland. This is a lie. Possibly the greatest […]
This is the kind of thing now that Mary Lou McDonald would be hopping mad about, if it was said by someone in any other party, but because it was a Sinn Fein Councillor, she’ll stay nice and quiet. One rule for the likes of you, another for party members in good standing, like Councillor […]
Séamus Healy, TD, on Climate Change: Climate change is a real and distressing phenomenon which disproportionately affects the most vulnerable in our society. We only have to think of a country like the Philippines and, more recently, the Pacific island of Vanuatu, to see the utter devastation that climate change is wreaking on the most […]
Fine Gael TD Dara Murphy has resigned his seat in the Dáil in order to take up a new, much better paid job, with the incoming European Commission. It’s hard to blame anyone for exchanging a seat in the Dáil for a seat in Brussels – the latter is a much better job. You won’t […]
Already this morning, you’ll find, if you look for them, tweets from journalists about how the turnout is low in Ireland’s four bye-elections, which are taking place today, and will be counted tomorrow. Conventionally, the media does not discuss the specific issues around a campaign on, or before, polling day, and even though no such […]