Last year was always going to be a hard act to follow but Eamon Gilmore’s leadership address tonight was disappointing, even if it did push many of the right buttons.
Once again, no other Irish politician does empathy with human suffering as well as him (or his speech writer). Read the rest of this entry »
The Conference Hall, post Leader's Address
Gilmore’s address contained nothing entirely unexpected. There is little a party leader can say these days that has not been said before, be in in a party address or in the Dáil. Read the rest of this entry »
Labour’s debate on the recommendations of its 21st Century Commission reminded me of similar debates at past congresses of the Union of Students in Ireland (USI). It wasn’t just because many of the younger speakers also popped up at USI debates, but the nature of the debate – disagreements about how the organisation should be structured and run – often featured at those gatherings of student representatives.
Paul Dillon, a former president of UCD Students’ Union was one of the most articulate speakers on the opposition side in Mullingar. He was joined by several Labour Youth delegates and speakers from the party’s Northern Ireland organisation. It was clear from the reception they received that many delegates sympathised with their cause. Read the rest of this entry »
Not surprisingly Labour delegates have voted overwhelmingly in favour for the implementation of the 21st Century Commission Report this afternoon, a move party members feel places them on the ‘cusp of greatness’.
During the debate there were 14 members speaking against the commission and 13 proposing it. That more people would take to the stage to oppose was not lost on some party members, specifically those in opposition.
The mood from both sides was that this was a deciding moment in the creation of a Labour party that could feasibly offer decisive alternative leadership after the next election. Speakers against the commission were keen to stress that their opposition to Eamon Gilmore’s proposals was not an opposition to Gilmore himself. Read the rest of this entry »
Something of a downer for Labour on the day that’s in it. Tomorrow’s Red C / Sunday Business Post poll:
FG 31 (+1)
FF 28 (+5)
Lab 17 (-5)
SF 7 (-4)
Green 7 (+1)
Others 10 (+2)
Greeting from the Labour Party conference in the ‘Gar (as I’m told they call it here). Ciara and I arrived just in time for Gilmore’s speech and since then we’ve been desperately looking for something to blog about, such has been the dearth of newsworthy happenings.
Not that Gilmore’s opening remarks to the conference didn’t have anything new in it. Read the rest of this entry »
And a warm welcome from the centre of Ireland, the heartland, the Lake County….
The Mullingar Park hotel is alive with perhaps a few less than the 1,000 delegates expected in Mullingar this weekend. Motions this evening have included social and family affairs, education and agriculture.
Eoin has an overview of the motions thus far and anything noteworthy that has cropped up.
The mood in the hotel is buoyant, Labour are topping polls at the moment and there is much talk of becoming a viable third option for Ireland’s voting public. Read the rest of this entry »
Darragh O’Donoghue looks ahead to Ireland’s visit to Murrayfield this Saturday in the Six Nations Championship.
As stage four of Ireland’s Grand Slam plan approaches in Murrayfield on Saturday, coach Declan Kidney has shuffled his side around, making four changes. While Rory Best in for Flannery at hooker is almost a like for like and most expected D’arcy and Leamy to get some game time sooner or later, there is another reason why I have some uneasy feelings as the side prepare to take on Scotland. Read the rest of this entry »
After looking for our questions, Brian Cowen has now responded on YouTube. In an email to me (and several thousand others) with the subject line ‘Answering your questions,’ Cowen says: “Over the last two weeks, people from all over the country have been submitting their questions for me through the new Fianna Fáil website. I received over a thousand questions on a vast number of topics. Given the overwhelming number you submitted, I’ve only been able to answer a selection of the most popular questions. I’d like to thank each of you for putting these questions to me.”
He links to the FF website where you can watch his responses to questions under four topics – the economy, the pension levy, the ‘political situation’, and ‘a smarter economy’. Here he is answering questions on the pension levy: Read the rest of this entry »
As a junior coalition partner, the Greens were always going to fall between two stools at their national conference: they could not be scathingly critical of the government, nor could they announce a raft of new initiatives as they only hold two cabinet portfolios.
On the night, Gormley played up to the party faithful in the first half of the speech (touching on all the Greens’ greatest hits: Trevor standing up to planning corruption; clamping down on bad planning; stopping corporate donations to political parties), before coming to more tedious business in the latter stages. I think the other way around would have worked better, with the climatic rallying cries coming in the closing minutes. Read the rest of this entry »
My friends, the Green Party will do the right thing. We will be part of the cure. And we will get Ireland back on the road to economic recovery.
- John Gormley, leader’s speech, Green Party National Convention
Mark Coughlan has the main points. I’ll have more shortly.
Hacks covering political conventions are often obsessed with capturing the ‘mood’ over the weekend. But while I don’t think the opinions of hundreds or thousands of delegates can be easily surmised, a certain resolution and determination seems to have emerged among Green Party members here in Wexford despite the subdued atmosphere.
I joined the Green Party just over two years ago, thinking it one of the most practical ways of doing something about the issues I believe will define our generation – climate change, resource depletion, social injustice and global poverty. I wasn’t in the country the night the party decided to enter government, but I was convinced it was the right move.
Like many members, I was swept up in the excitement of the occasion, ignoring a proposed programme for government disappointingly light on Green policy. For a small party with a short history on the fringe of Irish politics, the opportunity to enter government was too exciting – too historic – to turn down. I put the reality of the mediocre deal on offer to the back of my mind.
Since than, many on the left have criticsed the Greens’ decision to enter government, and particularly the speed with which some core party positions were dropped. However, it’s much easier to avoid the awkward practicalities of entering government and gain lasting influence than to stay outside on the moral high ground, standing on a soapbox that allows critics to appease their conscience and appear radical while practically achieving little, a position many on the left seem quite comfortable with.
The main only news from this morning: the two motions on a national unity government were defeated. The first, calling for the Greens to enter into negotiations with all the other parties in the Dáil, was rejected on the floor. The second, proposing that the leadership consider the merits of such a government, was too close to call by a hand count and a ballot was necessary. The result was 55 in favour, 45 against – short of the required two-thirds majority. Tight enough for a motion that, if passed, would have been embarrassing for the leadership.
Eoin
Yellow Roman Candles has just arrived in Wexford for the Green Party convention after a mammoth six hour trip from Galway – a trip that included a strange incident somewhere in Laois involving a line of stopped traffic, a minibus, and a large crowd on the road examining a weird gelatinous fluid smeared on the bonnet and windscreen of a car. Traveling through Clara and Tullamore before that, I wasn’t too surprised to see the endless hoardings and banners that congratulated local-man-made-good Brian Cowen on his appointment as Taoiseach gone.
The mood in the White’s hotel bar amongst party members appeared fairly subdued, and the crowd was quite a bit older than expected. Tomorrow is when the real action starts of course. I’m keen to hear how a couple of policy motions go down – there’s two that touch on whether it’s time for the Greens to pull out of government, one that calls on the government to do something about the vast number of empty houses in the country, another on nepotism in politics, another calling on Dublin Bus to gets it act together, as well as a rather silly motion calling for a national unity government. Overall the list of motion is fairly dull though, with most of them dealing with issues such as public and private sector salaries and bonuses, politicans’ pay and expeses, the economic crisis and something called the green economy. Boring! Could I suggest a motion proposing somebody (anybody!) else but Liam O’Maonlai for tomorrow’s pre-Gormley entertainment?
Given the seriousness of our economic situation, there was some speculation around City West on Saturday that the television audience for Cowen’s speech to the Soldiers (his fourth ‘State of the Nation,’ as it were) might break the 500,000 mark. In the event he pulled in 375,000.
That amounts to a decent 24.6% of the audience at that time. I suppose expecting the half mill was wishful thinking on a day when 1 million viewers had already watched a rugby match. Many of the viewers at home probably had their fill of TV for the day, while the pub audience would have moved on to a higher state of enlightenment by half past eight.
RTÉ also tell me that 88,000 watched Gerry Adams’ speech at the Sinn Féin Ard Fheis the previous Saturday (10.9% of the audience). I reckon it’s time Sinn Féin move to the 8.30-9pm slot – not many are able for the 50 minute-long political speech these days.
Cowen’s audience was well above the 263,000 (16.6%) who watched Kenny’s speech in November (though that was a Fine Gael ‘national conference’ and not a fully-fledged Ard Fheis), and also way past the 246,000 (14.6%) who watched Gilmore’s address to the Labour faithful at a ’special delegate conference’ later that month.
