Because of the referendum, there has not been a huge amount of activity around Leinster House this week.
There was a smattering of Government and Fianna Fail TDs knocking around this morning. The consensus was that the Yes side will prevail but there was a difference in confidence levels between parties.
Personally, I am quite proud of the way we hold referendums on just about everything in this State. It underlines the sovereignty of the people in a very significant way.
The texts of European treaties will never make it onto the bestseller shelves at airport bookshops. The prose can be horribly dense and inaccessible –under such a torrent of tortuous sentences even the most impermeable EU anoraks can feel the soul-destroying dampness seep through. (more…)
Greetings from sundrenched Killarney. It is a wonderful place especially in this weather but, ochone, ochone, your humble scribe is stuck indoors at a windowless conference centre.
I got some interesting statistics from the Department of Social Protection on the age profile of people signed-up to JobBridge, the Government scheme which allows people to work as interns while receiving the dole and a €50 allowance. (more…)
The Green Party conference is taking place this weekend in Kilkenny. It’s a low key event with a a few hundred delegates, with a good deal of self-examination and talk of renewal.
There could be few more suitable opportunities for a party in search of its soul than to go in search of its stance on the fiscal treaty.
The latest polls have all been trending towards Yes even though there is still a lot of volatility and a greater number of undecideds than you would expect at this stage of the campaign.
They say you can’t compare opinion polls from different companies but I’m never exactly sure why and people will do so anyway. Thus it is comforting for the Yes side that today’s Millward Brown Lansdowne figures in the Irish Independent show 37% saying they will vote for the Fiscal Treaty as compared to 24% who are opposed.
Anecdotal evidence was suggesting the Fiscal Treaty referendum was going in a negative direction so it was a little suprising to see the RedC poll in the Sunday Business Post indicating a very comfortable margin for Yes.
Does anyone remember one of Bertie Ahern’s better malapropisms, when he described some unsuccessful venture as a “damp squid”. One could not help being reminded of it this afternoon, listening to Éamon Ó Cuív expounding the reasons he is staying in Fianna Fail.
There’s just over three weeks to go to the fiscal treaty referendum. And it’s the only show in town at the moment, with Eamon O Cuiv and Fianna Fail providing a fascinating sideshow.
The Irish Times, as part of its online expansion, will be hosting a major debate on video between Simon Coveney and Mary Lou McDonald. It will be uploaded to our website tomorrow morning and will be one of a number of new innovations to our service we will be introducing during the referendum.
