By Matt Wall, May 3rd, 2011. In the recent election campaign, political reform finally entered the agenda of mainstream Irish politics. Given the awful political and economic mess in which the country currently finds itself, this is not surprising. However, political promises during an election campaign are not always a reliable guide as to the actions that…
Ken McDonagh 13 April 2011 Vincent Browne has a new bugbear – party finance. In today’s Irish Times he writes: ‘The only reason anyone would give money to a political party is because they expect to get something in return’ He goes on to link the problem of private funding for political parties to the…
Mark Farrelly, 31 March 2011 Building on from my study on the ages of TDs historically, I have conducted a more in depth analysis of the ages of TDs elected to the 31st Dáil. Overall the average age of the new Dáil on its first sitting was 48.5, in comparison to 50.4 for the 30th…
Posted by Elaine Byrne The Moriarty Tribunal has published two reports today into Michael Lowry and Ben Dunne and Michael Lowry and Denis O’Brien Some highlights: The Moriarty Tribunal has described Michael Lowry’s actions in influencing the awarding of the mobile phone licence as “disgraceful” and “insidious”. The tribunal found that his influence was both…
Eoin O’Malley (10 March, 2011) For much of the election campaign parties promised that there would be a change to the way politics was done. This continued to the first day of the 31st Dáil. But will it? One way to judge the government is by the programme for government, and another by its actions.
Eoin O’Malley (28 February, 2011) Although the election was a seismic event in the redevelopment of the Irish party system, the decisions made in the next week as to the structure of the government will have a greater long term impact. The decision Labour has to take as to whether to go into government or…
The Millward Brown Lansdowne opinion poll, published in the 23rd February edition of The Irish Independent estimates party support as follows: Fianna Fail 14%, Fine Gael 38%, Labour 20%, Green Party 1%, Sinn Fein 11%, Others 16%. Based solely on these poll figures, my uniform-swing constituency level analysis models seat estimates for the different parties/groupings as…
Adrian Kavanagh, 19th February 2011 The Red C opinion poll, published in the 20th February edition of The Sunday Business Post estimates party support as follows: Fianna Fail 16%, Fine Gael 39%, Labour 17%, Green Party 2%, Sinn Fein 12%, Others 14%. Based solely on these poll figures, my uniform-swing constituency level analysis models seat estimates for the different parties/groupings…
Eoin O’Malley (19 February, 2011) We have a tendency to see new polls and take them as indicating some real change in the fortunes of the parties since the last comparable poll was taken, when possibly much of the variation is caused by differences in samples – the luck of the draw. One way to alleviate the…
neilardiff.com Eoin O’Malley (12 February 2011) The polls are making the Labour party’s ‘Gilmore for Taoiseach’ campaign strategy irrelevant. In any case is it sensible for the left to enter government with a centre right party again?
Irish Politics Forum 