Sunday Business Post/Red C Poll

whatawaster

FF 18 (-6)
FG 32 (+1)
Lab 27 (+4)
SF 9 (-1)
Green 4 (+1)
Ind 10 (+1).

We'll have another week of rumours about heaves, with nothing actually happening, but 18% is disastrous for FF, and if it happened on GE, i'm sure some ministers would be in trouble

PomBear

man, those polls are such BS

Nodin

There is something odd when one crowd consistently have labour as largest opposition party and the other have FG....Somebodys methodology must be askew.

jmcc

If those figures are confirmed, then it is curtains for Cowen and FF. The interesting thing will be seeing how RTE/Pravda spins this.

Regards...jmcc

jmcc

Nodin wrote: »

There is something odd when one crowd consistently have labour as largest opposition party and the other have FG....Somebodys methodology must be askew.

It may be the allocation of the Don't Knows. There are some good politicial stats heads on P.ie who could explain it.

Regards...jmcc

Liam Byrne

Looks like at least some of the core 20% are finally copping themselves on!

I'd say "great news" except that 18% is still 18% too high

Iwasfrozen

Sinn Fein seem to be a largest proportional winners, going from four to fifteen seats.

Nodin

jmcc wrote: »

It may be the allocation of the Don't Knows. There are some good politicial stats heads on P.ie who could explain it.

Regards...jmcc

Yeah....but wading through the other headers to find them would require more patience than I can currently muster....

gandalf

Iwasfrozen wrote: »

Sinn Fein seem to be a largest proportional winners, going from four to fifteen seats.

The problem with SF is their transfers tend to be very poor. So unless they get very close to the quota first count they will probably not get elected.

Iwasfrozen

gandalf wrote: »

The problem with SF is their transfers tend to be very poor. So unless they get very close to the quota first count they will probably not get elected.

True but I suppose they can expect labour transfers. Providing labour don't run too many candidates.

flutered

give it another two months it will get worse for dff, the problems facing f.g. are older people remember how they can cut, the buisness community do not trust labour, thats my take on it.

PatsytheNazi

whatawaster wrote: »

FF 18 (-6)
FG 32 (+1)
Lab 27 (+4)
SF 9 (-1)
Green 4 (+1)
Ind 10 (+1).

We'll have another week of rumours about heaves, with nothing actually happening, but 18% is disastrous for FF, and if it happened on GE, i'm sure some ministers would be in trouble

Interesting the Greens going up +1, while SF loose -1 and Indos just +1. Great to see FF at 18%. Hopefully it will be down to 8% after the budget and carries into the election.

Still I'm not optimistic as FG may form the largest number of TD's and hence have the clout over Lab. What I fear is that FG will impose the same policy's as FF as FG are basically only a snotty version of FF and will protect the scum, the so called ' wealth creators ' who have manufactured the economic abyss.

hotmail.com

On the basis of these figures, FF could lose 25-35 seats, which would be an electoral disaster.

FF are fecked in Dublin and it'll be interesting to see how many candidates they select to run in Dublin constituencies.

Mary Hanafin's seat is in real danger as is Michael Martin's.

PatsytheNazi

Dev will be spinning in his grave.

Sierra Oscar

Electoral disaster looms for FF, no doubt about that.

PatsytheNazi

Sierra Oscar wrote: »

Electoral disaster looms for FF, no doubt about that.

Break open the champagne !!!!!!

Poly

hotmail.com wrote: »

On the basis of these figures, FF could lose 25-35 seats, which would be an electoral disaster.

Happy days!

Is this the first poll since Cowen's "nasal congestion"?

PatsytheNazi

I wonder what effect the arrest of the FF councilors yesterday had on this poll. Would it be as low for FF if the arrests weren't the headline news ? Will the gombeens have forgot about this for the next poll/election ?

copacetic

Iwasfrozen wrote: »

True but I suppose they can expect labour transfers. Providing labour don't run too many candidates.

not at the current Labour figures, there is no way most of the people who switched their votes to Labour from FF or FG are going to waste a transfer on SF.

spider guardian

interview with cowen in the times today, still firmly believes in the 2012 mandate, best of luck to him i say!

Sierra Oscar

spider guardian wrote: »

interview with cowen in the times today, still firmly believes in the 2012 mandate, best of luck to him i say!

Well his mandate is valid - democracy would be a farce if an election had to be called based on every opinion poll result.

EDIT: Although I would be very sceptical of FF having the ability to soldier on if they put yet another new leader in place . . .

However its now pretty apparent that FF, for the good of the party in mind, should have held an election last year at the latest.

Poly

Sierra Oscar wrote: »

Well his mandate is valid - democracy would be a farce

Democracy is a farce if your'e in Donegal sw, Dub s. or waterford.

spider guardian

Sierra Oscar wrote: »

Well his mandate is valid - democracy would be a farce if an election had to be called based on every opinion poll result.

However its now pretty apparent that FF, for the good of the party in mind, should have held an election last year at the latest.

true, and the government has pushed through some very tough measures in its term (NAMA, Lisbon, hairshirt budgets) but if all the by-elections were held in the morning then it would be difficult to see them lasting much longer. opinion polls can be hit or miss but the discontent has been brewing for a long time now. that said i would hate to see a populist government (Labour) come in, stick their heads in the sands and make things even worse than they are now

jmcc

PatsytheNazi wrote: »

Dev will be spinning in his grave.

He might have gotten caught in the Irish Press printing presses.

Regards...jmcc

Duiske

gandalf wrote: »

The problem with SF is their transfers tend to be very poor. So unless they get very close to the quota first count they will probably not get elected.

True, and that problem was very evident during last years local elections.
My own feeling is that Sinn Fein and the Independents may suffer in the next election, Not through any fault of their own, but because I think the voters want FF gone, and will turn to parties that have a realistic chance of making that happen.

As for the Greens, the only way they can save themselves now is to disassociate themselves from FF. My money would be on them to do this and bring down the Government, possibly as early as next Febuary.

Barring a miraculous return growth in the economy I would expect the percentages to be largely in line with that poll, though with small decreases for SF and Idependents.

GSF

PatsytheNazi wrote: »

I wonder what effect the arrest of the FF councilors yesterday had on this poll. Would it be as low for FF if the arrests weren't the headline news ? Will the gombeens have forgot about this for the next poll/election ?

None. The fieldwork was done on Monday - Wednesday of this week.

Liam Byrne

Sierra Oscar wrote: »

Well his mandate is valid - democracy would be a farce if an election had to be called based on every opinion poll result.

It's not about the poll result, it's about the fact that Cowen was implicated in the crash, and Lenihan's decisions have been proven disastrous.

Sierra Oscar wrote: »

However its now pretty apparent that FF, for the good of the party in mind, should have held an election last year at the latest.

Who cares about "the good of the party" ? All we're interested in is the good of the country.

Donnaghm

hotmail.com wrote: »

On the basis of these figures, FF could lose 25-35 seats, which would be an electoral disaster.

Well when considering the fact that FF will be completely transfer repellent in the next election and that FG were reduced to 31 seats in 2002 with 22 per cent of the support, FF could lose 45 seats. And FF will probably lose all their good (by good I mean good by FF standards) communicators who are from urban constituencies so they'll find it very hard to recover from there. How delightful I say.

Sierra Oscar

Liam Byrne wrote: »

Who cares about "the good of the party" ? All we're interested in is the good of the country.

FF care about the good of the party - just making the observation that they must be kicking themselves now thinking that the parties popularity had bottomed out in 09.

Mr.Micro

spider guardian wrote: »

interview with cowen in the times today, still firmly believes in the 2012 mandate, best of luck to him i say!

Mandate indeed one that currently precludes 3 bye-election TD's from expressing the will of their voters. It rings hollow from Bifffo now, this so called mandate...... minus 3. With a bit of luck come a general election, instead of wipeout for FF, maybe it will be total wipeout.

Donnaghm

I'm just so glad FF's recent media blitz of RTE/Pravda where FF reps were doing the rounds on the Saturday Night Show and the LLS hasn't worked at all. Delightful.

galwayrush

18% still happy to vote FF.......... shocking.

ninty9er

The last poll that matters was conducted on May 24th 2007. The next one will be held when Biffo decides.

Anything in between is great entertainment, but nothing more. Opinion polls are based on a snapshot in time and when questioned you don't get 3 weeks to think about your answer.

Fianna Fáil is going to lose seats, no doubt.

For all of you crows out there harping on about the "good of the party", Biffo knew in 2008 that it was not in the interests of Fianna Fáil to continue in government. He was told by veteran ministers that it was not in the interests of the party to call an election.

An election wasn't the right choice for the COUNTRY then, and it is not the right choice for the COUNTRY now. The markets need stability or we're going down the plug hole. An election will not be decisive. It will leave 3 blocks. Labour, Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil. Labour and Fine Gael being the largest block are diametrically opposed on the needs of the country. It's staring you right in the face. WAKE UP!

For anyone who would like to have been the person making the call on Sept 30th 2008, call Brian Lenihan and see if he would have swapped places with you. For all of the crowing and moaning, if he did nothing he would have been castigated, if he let the banks fail he would have been castigated (and one bank failing WOULD have meant all of them failing due to interdependency of deposits) by people who couldn't get cash from any ATM in the country 48 hours later, and he is being castigated now for not doing either, but acting on, what was at the time, the best information he had.

It deeply sickens me that there are people out there who have no inclination how much government ministers agonise over the decisions they have made can just make sweeping statements like "sure didn't it suit the party".

**** the party, it's gone beyond that, and did a long time ago.

deanh

99er, you must be one of the tragic 18% if you still believe all of that spin. FF couldn't allow Anglo to fail because it would have brought down Sean Quinn and the rest of the golden circle with it. Simples. Lenihan and Cowan( Was he capable of making a sober judgement on the night?) could have provided a simple deposit guarantee of €50,000 per account as in the rest of Europe. This would have reassured savers who were already queing up to get their money back. But it would not have saved Anglo and the Government knew it, so the full guarantee was issued and we are all paying for it now. That explains their dive in popularity.

Laminations

ninty9er wrote: »

An election wasn't the right choice for the COUNTRY then, and it is not the right choice for the COUNTRY now. The markets need stability or we're going down the plug hole. An election will not be decisive. It will leave 3 blocks. Labour, Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil. Labour and Fine Gael being the largest block are diametrically opposed on the needs of the country. It's staring you right in the face. WAKE UP

Stop with the FF PR tripe, it's nauseating. The markets would welcome an election and a fresh mandate to implement decisions for the next 5 years. The current government isn't very stable and spends an inappropriate amount of time on green issues at a time when its the economy stupid. We have turned so many corners and posted so many dud figures the markets, like the people, have no faith in this government. After the budget we should march for an election.

GarlicBread

ninty9er wrote: »

An election wasn't the right choice for the COUNTRY then, and it is not the right choice for the COUNTRY now. The markets need stability or we're going down the plug hole. An election will not be decisive. It will leave 3 blocks. Labour, Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil. Labour and Fine Gael being the largest block are diametrically opposed on the needs of the country. It's staring you right in the face. WAKE UP!

Its not up to FF as to when an election happens, you do not f**king own this country. The markets are appaulled that cowen and lenihan are still in office. Its the two of them that are the damn liability and its the two of them that are most to blame. We are on the verge of sending lenihan back to the markets again and then the **** will hit the fan.

How much more will they devestate the country before they are kicked out of office? They are only thinking about how to cover themselves from criminal charges because once they are out everyone will be vying for their blood, apart from that 18% of course.

Rabble Rabble

The markets may welcome a fresh mandate - but they will not be happy with Labour-FG if Labour is the largest party.

That said it is clear from the constituency breakdowns that Labour is getting the rich constituencies in Dublin; it is a Champagne Socialist party to beat the band, and no more or less in hock to the Public Service than FF.

In other words not the least bit socialist. However if they get elected on not reducing the deficit as needed, it is goodbye to Ireland for a generation.

Rabble Rabble

The thing about the 18% is that it is close to, or past, the tipping point where falls in percentage votes give much larger falls in seats. In other words another 8% decline could see FF's seats head towards zero.

thebman

ninty9er wrote: »

For anyone who would like to have been the person making the call on Sept 30th 2008, call Brian Lenihan and see if he would have swapped places with you. For all of the crowing and moaning, if he did nothing he would have been castigated, if he let the banks fail he would have been castigated (and one bank failing WOULD have meant all of them failing due to interdependency of deposits) by people who couldn't get cash from any ATM in the country 48 hours later, and he is being castigated now for not doing either, but acting on, what was at the time, the best information he had.

It deeply sickens me that there are people out there who have no inclination how much government ministers agonise over the decisions they have made can just make sweeping statements like "sure didn't it suit the party".

**** the party, it's gone beyond that, and did a long time ago.

Almost like they should never have let an unsustainable bubble boil in the first place isn't it?

You seem to forget who was in charge throughout that time...

FF created the mess and now your arguing that they don't want to be the ones that clean it up and who would but an election was a bad idea?

Are you joking? They have no credibility at home or abroad and won't be around to implement the future budgets to get us out of this mess so offer no promise of stability for the future to markets or the Irish people. Nobody has confidence in them to stabilise the economy and Irish people will continue to fear for their jobs and not spend until they are gone. FF represents bad news at this present moment in time so the people can have no confidence until they are gone from power. Everyone seems to know this except the 18% who one can only presume are benefiting from FF being in power as it sure as hell isn't the best thing for the country at the moment.

FF must go, they are only there because they are afraid to face the public at the moment. You can harp on about national interest all you like but they only care about the party. FF were always going to lose seats when the bubble burst, it is one of the reasons they kept it going in the first place (that and many members of the party were heavily involved in property so had an invested interest in keeping it going until it burst). With FF, it is ALWAYS party before the people. They remain in power as they know the faith that awaits them when they go to the people.

Sierra Oscar

deanh wrote: »

99er, you must be one of the tragic 18% if you still believe all of that spin. FF couldn't allow Anglo to fail because it would have brought down Sean Quinn and the rest of the golden circle with it. Simples.

Does it not worry you that only 18 TD's in Dáil Éireann (out of 166) voted against the bank guarantee?

Not very "simples" when you take that into account.

ninty9er

thebman wrote: »

FF created the mess and now your arguing that they don't want to be the ones that clean it up and who would but an election was a bad idea?

Point me to where I said they don't want to be the ones to clean it up?

thebman wrote: »

(that and many members of the party were heavily involved in property so had an invested interest in keeping it going until it burst). With FF, it is ALWAYS party before the people.

Point me to any party that could lead a government that the same does not apply to.

At this stage it is nothing to do with the party. The membership knows this. The membership of the party accepts that casualties are going to be massive, it doesn't stop the membership from wanting to fix the problems facing Ireland. Only Fianna Fáil has nothing to lose at the next election, which is why it IS in the national interest for Fianna Fáil to deliver the next 2 budgets, because public opinion is irrelevant to the measures taken at this stage.

GarlicBread wrote: »

Its not up to FF as to when an election happens, you do not f**king own this country.

No, it's not, but it is up to the Taoiseach.

deanh wrote: »

99er, you must be one of the tragic 18% if you still believe all of that spin.

At the moment there is no party that I would say has it right.
Any party that opposes any of the below needs a kick up the arse:

• Public sector redundancies of 50,000 (Gardaí, Nurses, Teachers and Doctors excepted)
• Some form of student contribution to higher education regardless of household income
• Tax increases
• Jobseekers Assistance cuts (not benefit, people have to gain entitlement to that)
• Pension cuts
• Child Benefit Cuts

deanh wrote: »

FF couldn't allow Anglo to fail because it would have brought down Sean Quinn and the rest of the golden circle with it. Simples. Lenihan and Cowan( Was he capable of making a sober judgement on the night?) could have provided a simple deposit guarantee of €50,000 per account as in the rest of Europe. This would have reassured savers who were already queing up to get their money back.

The suggestion that the government parties acted to protect Seán Quinn is bull. Where is he now? Being pursued for billions of euro in debt.

The fact of the matter is that a failure in Anglo would have caused a failure at PTSB which would have caused contagion. In hindsight letting Anglo fail would have been the option most suitable, but it would still have been expensive as all deposits held in Anglo by the other banks would have caused them to fail. Is there any part of that you don't understand?

Whether you agree with me or not is irrelevant to the argument. Do you understand that letting Anglo fail would also have cost the state billions? Do you also understand that NAMA is not a black hole and that any money given to the banks by the state is REPAYABLE? Again your opinion is irrelevant to the argument, do you understand the facts?

thebman

ninty9er wrote: »

Point me to where I said they don't want to be the ones to clean it up?

call Brian Lenihan and see if he would have swapped places with you.

Your implying he'd love to not have been in that position and give it to someone else. i.e. he didn't want to be the one to clean it up, i.e. as he is a member of FF, FF don't want to clean it up.

Point me to any party that could lead a government that the same does not apply to.

It doesn't matter as they aren't in power currently doing it. There is at least the possibility they wouldn't do it. If they do it, they can equally be held accountable at the following election and take the punishment for their actions same as FF will be doing in the next election. Eventually we'll train these political parties like dogs by slapping them on the nose when they do wrong. If we reward failure, we'll just end up with p*** all over the floor as we have done.

FG have got the message that people want reform with their policies like abolishing the seanad etc... I don't necessarily agree 100% with them but it is a movement in the correct direction to start trying to reform our political system so we don't end up back here 10 years down the road.

FF are in fire brigade mode at the moment, only putting out fires but not finding the source of the fire and trying to ensure a new fire does not start. In fact they are trying to kick off another one by hoping property prices rise again with NAMA.

maynooth_rules

Im still shocked that there a possibilty that almost 1 in 5 people in this country still intend to vote for FF. That scares me to my soul :rolleyes:

oppenheimer1

ninty9er wrote: »

The last poll that matters was conducted on May 24th 2007. The next one will be held when Biffo decides.

Anything in between is great entertainment, but nothing more. Opinion polls are based on a snapshot in time and when questioned you don't get 3 weeks to think about your answer.

Fianna Fáil is going to lose seats, no doubt.

For all of you crows out there harping on about the "good of the party", Biffo knew in 2008 that it was not in the interests of Fianna Fáil to continue in government. He was told by veteran ministers that it was not in the interests of the party to call an election.

An election wasn't the right choice for the COUNTRY then, and it is not the right choice for the COUNTRY now. The markets need stability or we're going down the plug hole. An election will not be decisive. It will leave 3 blocks. Labour, Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil. Labour and Fine Gael being the largest block are diametrically opposed on the needs of the country. It's staring you right in the face. WAKE UP!

For anyone who would like to have been the person making the call on Sept 30th 2008, call Brian Lenihan and see if he would have swapped places with you. For all of the crowing and moaning, if he did nothing he would have been castigated, if he let the banks fail he would have been castigated (and one bank failing WOULD have meant all of them failing due to interdependency of deposits) by people who couldn't get cash from any ATM in the country 48 hours later, and he is being castigated now for not doing either, but acting on, what was at the time, the best information he had.

It deeply sickens me that there are people out there who have no inclination how much government ministers agonise over the decisions they have made can just make sweeping statements like "sure didn't it suit the party".

**** the party, it's gone beyond that, and did a long time ago.

I'd almost given up on this forum but finally I see at least one person can see through the party political bull thats being spouted by so many here.

Let FF continue on making the right decisions and get the deficit in order. In fact it doesn't matter who is in charge because the deficit has to be under control by 2014 so the only choice the government has is where the cuts will fall, not how much they will be.

oppenheimer1

Laminations wrote: »

Stop with the FF PR tripe, it's nauseating. The markets would welcome an election and a fresh mandate to implement decisions for the next 5 years. The current government isn't very stable and spends an inappropriate amount of time on green issues at a time when its the economy stupid. We have turned so many corners and posted so many dud figures the markets, like the people, have no faith in this government. After the budget we should march for an election.

Well theres spin and then theres making stuff up and the bolded statement clearly falls in the latter. I don't know how you can call the government anything but stable considering it has stayed put through the greatest crisis an Irish government has seen since the Emergency. If you want to see what instability actually looks like, the politics of Ireland in the 1980's in Ireland or today in Belgium would be a good start.

And it spends too much time on green matters? You have to be kidding, the government agenda and the media is dominated by the state of the economy and not a day goes by without some mention of it. It is the governments No. 1 priority and by a long long distance. Do you actually expect life to stop in other departments because of the economic situation?

bcmf

99er is right!!!
And before anyone goes attacking me for being a FF sympathiser let me make my position clear on FF. If the party falls the way of PD's then it will be one of the best things to happen.
But it really doesnt matter at this stage who is in power for the next few years the damage is done. Its now a rescue situation and regardless of who holds power the tough desicions will have to be made.

As said opinion polls are only a snapshot in time and only 1 real poll matters.
Speaking to somebody who was on the inside of FF until recently and they said that when they worked there and the rating fell below 40% it was all hands to the pump as it was viewed to be disastorous. With that in mind ,and taking into cosideration 18%, is the situaton saveable for FF (..and if there is a god I hope not)?

This is what I think will happen.FF local poliictians will keep out of the public eye but will getting their faces in local/regional papers etc 'saying well we have campaigned for this and that and now I have secured it' ... in short they will invoke parish pump politics and probably trot out the line '...well I had to do what had to be done in order to get the new town hall/road etc etc".

thebman

oppenheimer1 wrote: »

I'd almost given up on this forum but finally I see at least one person can see through the party political bull thats being spouted by so many here.

Let FF continue on making the right decisions and get the deficit in order. In fact it doesn't matter who is in charge because the deficit has to be under control by 2014 so the only choice the government has is where the cuts will fall, not how much they will be.

FF have been failing to face up to getting the deficit under control since this started!

You are right they are in the best position not to give a crap but they consistently fail to make the moves we know are necessary until now when their hand is forced.

They are still afraid of making hard decisions because now hard decisions could put them in a position that actually destroys the party. This budget will only be only as tough as FF think it needs to be to borrow from the markets next year. They seem to be trying to leave the real hard decisions for the next government.

At that point, a significant percentage of our annual income will be going on interest on our debt alone, ignoring paying it off.

We need public sector refrom, pay cuts for it, redundancies and reform of taxes to be more on income than consumption taxes and reduction in cost of state run services such as Irish rail, electricity etc...

FF don't look like they are interested in implementing all of the above to me. Looks more like they are doing everything possible to avoid implementing the harsh cuts necessary TBH.

Not that any other party would be any better IMO but no point pretending FF are something they are not.

Lame Lantern

Let's not bury Fianna Fáil too hastily. Polling during Dáil terms will always penalise the sitting government disproportionately than on election day. The same phenomenon exists in mid-term elections. People will vote for the opposition to register their discontent but a significant portion will ultimately shift loyalties when they come to the ballot box after those same opposition parties come under scrutiny themselves. It also neglects the significant profiles of certain FF deputies in their own constituencies that will bump them up on the tally by a few points, which will be especially visible when their numbers going into the contest are this low.

I suspect the business post's methods of polling Dublin to be a little bit flawed as both FF and Labour are appearing lower than what would be expected compared to other polls, but I dunno. Anyway, the questions these numbers raise are:

1. How solid is Labour support? How significant is the protest element in their numbers? As an aside, Sinn Féin almost certainly is buoyed by this phenomenon and will lose a ton of it by election day.

2. If Fine Gael can no longer pick up the same protest element that Labour can, they are clearly not presenting themselves as a viable alternative. How much of a bleed will they suffer heading into an election cycle if they can't turn things around if this is a case? Will most of that bleed go back to FF, the other traditionally governing party or will Labour get a hold of it?

3. It doesn't look like Labour are taking their oft-mentioned weakness in the northwest seriously, have they simply bowed out of campaign money into the region?

Fianna Fáil's future electoral strategy seems simple enough: Hide Brian Cowen, draw Enda Kenny into the line of fire as much as possible, present a vote for Labour as a vote for Fine Gael and simply exploit FG's lack of credibility by running a brutally negative campaign while disguising their party's own ruling personalities. It won't be enough to maintain current numbers, but they may be able to deny Fine Gael the opportunity to form a government with Labour.

Labour will plaster Eamon Gilmore's face all over everything, run two candidates in every 4 and 5 seater in Dublin, Leinster and urban Munster and batter Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil on policy issues without publishing any of their own.

Fine Gael has a lot of building to do. They need to present themselves as credible and put a significant distance between themselves and Labour over the next six months in the polls if they want to mount any form of an effective campaign. As of right now if they were to win it would be on the back of poor voter management and weak candidature by Labour and a tide of confused protest votes going for the most traditional vote Kenny rather than Gilmore. They're lucky that the message coming out of government buildings has been so erratic over the last year with FF having seemingly lost sight of the long-term political dimension.

imme

ninty9er wrote: »

The last poll that matters was conducted on May 24th 2007. The next one will be held when Biffo decides.

Anything in between is great entertainment, but nothing more. Opinion polls are based on a snapshot in time and when questioned you don't get 3 weeks to think about your answer.

Fianna Fáil is going to lose seats, no doubt.

For all of you crows out there harping on about the "good of the party", Biffo knew in 2008 that it was not in the interests of Fianna Fáil to continue in government. He was told by veteran ministers that it was not in the interests of the party to call an election.

An election wasn't the right choice for the COUNTRY then, and it is not the right choice for the COUNTRY now. The markets need stability or we're going down the plug hole. An election will not be decisive. It will leave 3 blocks. Labour, Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil. Labour and Fine Gael being the largest block are diametrically opposed on the needs of the country. It's staring you right in the face. WAKE UP!

For anyone who would like to have been the person making the call on Sept 30th 2008, call Brian Lenihan and see if he would have swapped places with you. For all of the crowing and moaning, if he did nothing he would have been castigated, if he let the banks fail he would have been castigated (and one bank failing WOULD have meant all of them failing due to interdependency of deposits) by people who couldn't get cash from any ATM in the country 48 hours later, and he is being castigated now for not doing either, but acting on, what was at the time, the best information he had.

It deeply sickens me that there are people out there who have no inclination how much government ministers agonise over the decisions they have made can just make sweeping statements like "sure didn't it suit the party".

**** the party, it's gone beyond that, and did a long time ago.

will the real Willie O'Dea please stand up.;)

re your point with possible coalition partners FG & Lab being opposed to each other, well that's life, coalitions are often opposed to each other, but they make decisions and move on.

re the B Lenihan point about him acting on best info available. The guy wasn't qualified to act in the matter. He's a lawyer by training.

GSF

ninty9er wrote: »

The last poll that matters was conducted on May 24th 2007.

So the council and European elections don't matter?

Liam Byrne

oppenheimer1 wrote: »

I'd almost given up on this forum but finally I see at least one person can see through the party political bull thats being spouted by so many here.

Where ? Oh - a well-known party member ? Interesting benchmark.

oppenheimer1 wrote: »

Let FF continue on making the right decisions and get the deficit in order. In fact it doesn't matter who is in charge because the deficit has to be under control by 2014 so the only choice the government has is where the cuts will fall, not how much they will be.

I'd like to see them START making some "right decisions". As you say, they have a choice as to where the cuts fall, and considering their choices to day involve well-heeled people getting massive pensions and pay while ordinary people struggle, then I don't want to see them having that choice.

The only reason why FF wants to stay in power is so that they can make more crap decisions and then blame those decisions for their unpopularity, hoping that public outcry about those will make enough people forget that FF are unpopular because they are the cause of those decisions.