Ireland Calling

Irish are still stressed out

It has been a stressful week here in Ireland, and no one was feeling it more than the former minister Michael Lowry. 

Back in the mid-1990s he was the minister for communications when Ireland's second national cell phone license was awarded to a company led by the businessman Denis O'Brien. 

O'Brien subsequently sold the business and made over €200 million, which became the basis for the billion dollar fortune he has made from phone businesses in the meantime.  But there were allegations right from the beginning that Lowry had influenced the selection process which gave the license to O'Brien's company rather than other applicants. 

Smiles as bail out crunch approaches Ireland

Prime Minister Kenny's St. Patrick's Day trip to the White House went very well, judging by the reaction in the American press and the way it looked on Irish TV, showing the instant easy rapport he had with President Obama.

Kenny is good in that kind of situation ...he's personable, relaxed, good company, he can tell a joke and deliver a speech. So back here we're not surprised that he carried it off so well and so effortlessly.

That kind of intimate, friendly setting is where he shines. His speech was poetic, moving and inspired (take a bow whoever wrote it), cleverly linking the experience of the slaves from Africa and the destitute Irish immigrants after the Famine and their joint role in building America.

Irish Government suffers a shaky start as Europe says no

The new Irish government is off to a somewhat shaky start. You could almost feel sorry for them.

The customary thing here is for the media to give an incoming administration a honeymoon of a week or two to give them a chance to settle in. But this time it’s different. This time there can be no honeymoon.

Like many newly married couples in Ireland these days, the new coalition partners did not really expect to get one. Given the crisis we face, the country cannot afford the time.

Ireland's new Government established - What's the plan to save the country?

I had a teacher many years ago who was forever using the French phrase “plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose.” In Ireland's second official language, it means the more things change, the more they stay the same.

My old teacher and his catchphrase kept coming to mind over the past week as the dust settled after the election and it became clear how desperately eager Fine Gael and the Labor Party are to grasp the reins of power.

They're so eager they could not even put on a show of disagreement and brinkmanship as they held talks to hammer out an agreed program for governing the country over the next five years.

Following General Election Ireland's problems are far from over

The Irish general election last Friday was as apocalyptic as expected, with the once almighty Fianna Fail party decimated and the Fine Gael party taking its place as the biggest party by far in the state.  

Journalists are fond of throwing around the word historic, but really there is no other word to describe what has happened.  Ninety years of Civil War politics has come to an end.

Fine Gael, the party which grew out of the side that won the Civil War and established the Irish Free State, only to be dumped a few years later, has regained its rightful place as the dominant force in Irish political life.
  
For decades Fine Gael has been the weaker twin of the pair of parties that emerged from the ashes of the Civil War.  Fianna Fail, with its anti-Treaty "republican" ethos and its core demand for the immediate reunification of Ireland, has been a cancer in the Irish body politic ever since de Valera led it to victory in 1932.   
Since then it has been the dominant political party in Ireland, in power for most of the time.  It positioned itself as the only party that was "sound" on the national question.