Adrian Kavanagh, 23rd January 2011 Today’s Sunday Independent poll produced some interesting figures and were reflective no doubt of Fianna Fail and Brian Cowen’s recent travails : Fianna Fail 8%, Fine Gael 27%, Labour 29%, Sinn Fein 8%, Green Party 3%, Others 11% (doesn’t include Don’t Knows). As this poll was just based on 200 responses, it is not…
Eoin O’Malley (22 January, 2011) Brian Cowen’s decision to stand down comes mainly because he showed a lack of political judgement in pursuing a cabinet reshuffle to renew his party just weeks before an election. Cowen claimed he should have been allowed to reshuffle his cabinet as he wanted. He said it was the convention that party…
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…
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…
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…
by Eoin O’Malley (13 June, 2010) Coming up to and in the wake of the reports on the economic crisis in Ireland there was a gradual shift away from the Lehman Brothers defence and admissions that mistakes were made by Brian Cowen and the governments between about 2002 and 2008. This culminated last week with…
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.
Details of today’s Irish Times/Ipsos Mori poll can be seen here. Quite a shift since the last Red C poll, discussed in a previous posting. Even allowing for the usual issues of margins of error and different polling methodologies, this is a dramatic result for Labour and not the best of news for Fine Gael…
If commentators are right, it’s likely that Brian Cowen will use Willie O’Dea’s resignation/ dismissal to reshuffle the cabinet. The thinking is that a reshuffle at this time will give the government a new impetus for the latter half of this Dáil. We’re supposed to conclude that with people in new posts and some new…
Irish Politics Forum 