Eoin O’Malley (UPDATED 17 January, 2011)
The fact that Cowen has pushed for a vote of confidence in his leadership would seem to indicate that he is secure that he has the numbers to win it. He has the advantage of having spent the previous three days canvassing support openly, whereas Micheál Martin was unable or unwilling to show his hand and campaign openly. Cowen also set the timing for any challenge, limiting the time Martin will be able to campaign. Continue reading
Eoin O’Malley, 1 December, 2010
There is widespread and understandable expectation that Fianna Fáil will perform poorly in the next election. But in an earlier post Michael Gallagher points out that Fianna Fáil tends to bounce back from opposition into government. There is always a tendency to think ‘this time is different’, but this time, maybe it is. Continue reading
Some of the political correspondents writing over the last week are reading a great deal into every government minister’s' utterance. Micheál Martin made an extremely banal comment when asked on Newstalk about the Cowen incident;
“I think we all have to reflect in terms of how the conference was organised, in terms of communications issues and so on like that. Clearly we have lessons to learn and we will work on that particular agenda in terms of future events and future communications strategies.” Continue reading
Eoin O’Malley (6th July, 2010)
Little attention is given in today’s papers to Brian Lenihan’s appearance before the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Finance and the Public Service yesterday. There he answered questions on the proposed Commission of Investigation into the banking crisis and in doing so made some statements on how he sees his ministerial responsibility. Continue reading
Today’s Sunday Independent provides some skimpy details of a fresh survey by Quantum research. Unfortunately, they have not provided much if any details, apart from that the sample size was 500 respondents. The main issue that is assessed is what the voters think of likely alternatives to Cowen and Kenny. Continue reading
