Presidential Election 2025

My memory of it was that Albert was far from the 'presumed' choice. FF had seen Lenihan defeated in the previous presidential election and smarting from that and Reynolds losing a GE and being the leader of two coalitions that ended prematurely, they had no faith in him winning a Presidential election. Hence Ahern looking elsewhere.

Still not sure why Leahy says Micheál and Micheál alone will chose. I get he will have influence but the parliamentary party always had final say.

She mention The Daily Show. That was her argument how to we bring young people to news. Are thing to po-faces on traditional news and current affairs, this was her argument not mine, this is what she was asking. She mention the potential of an Irish series like The Daily Show, forgetting or not know that RTÉ had previously produced such shows, she did not see the inherent problems in RTÉ: -

In a speech about Misinformation? she siad some along the lines of "I wonder if a more relaxed, perhaps comic, type of programme might work for young Irish Audiences, unlike the Today Tonight and Prime Time shows I presented, rather than the hard newscaster perhaps a more comic view of news, for example the Daily Show which is where many young people got their news, rather than from the Walter Conkites of the past."

That is not a direct quote. But failed to mention an Irish type of News Satire show of the past.

Next you'll tell me she thinks Today is on BBC Radio 4 and not the replacement for The Daily Show ;)

Do you think that Michael McDowell would be a good president?

https://rts.org.uk/event/gay-byrne-memorial-lecture-who-can-we-trust I can't find the speech but it was at this event. It's not dirt digging it is just something I noticed about the speech that stuck with me, and I felt she didn't really understand how much RTÉ back tracked on much of its content over the years. Apologies to the mods in politics.

I am sure their are several "Daily Shows" take you're pick 😏

As for McDowell, you agree he has all the characteristics that you have suggested for a president. A former Attorney General, Minister for Justice, Tánaiste, Senator and well respected Barrister.

On Russia and Ukraine, Connolly is part of the loony left, who talk incessantly about the US and the responsibility of the West for forcing Putin to invade. Complete and utter rubbish. Her support for Daly is indicative of this.

'Opposed' to the invasion and war can mean a whole lot of things. When used by the likes of Daly, it is both side nonsense, drawing no distinction between Ukraine resisting invasion and Russia launching an aggressive invasion.

NATO broke no promises. NATO has done nothing outside the bounds of the NATO Russia Founding Act whereas Russia has repeatedly broken promises it made in the Budapest agreement. A Ukraine in NATO was no threat to Russia, this is a war of plunder and conquest from Russia, nothing more.

I think she was making a distinction between an 'army' and 'Defence forces' there. If you take what you quoted out of it's context, you miss how she spoke of her respect for the Defence Forces, deplored their underfunding and praises their peacekeeping role. The full passage is a little more nuanced.

I will finish by making a few general points on what our Defence Forces are 100 years on. The clue is in the title. They are defence forces. I am very proud of them and we have a barracks in Galway. I am very proud, as is every Member of the Dáil, of our Defence Forces. We all stand fully behind their most basic demands in terms of money and conditions. What is happening under the Government's watch, and I do not wish to personalise this, is truly shocking. This is not an army. Ireland will never be able to have an army. We do not need an army. We are an independent, neutral, sovereign country. Our strength lies in our independent voice. Our strength lies in making the UN institutions function better. It is utterly misleading to say changes to the triple lock are necessary and we need to tinker with them. It is dangerous, disingenuous and unacceptable. The Minister of State's party will be in serious trouble if it persists in going down the road of changing the triple lock.

We need transformative action. The one phrase the Tánaiste has used repeatedly is "transformative action". We also need transformative action to stop wars. We cannot be cheerleaders for wars. There is nothing to be gained by joining up with the military-industrial complex that Europe is in the middle of, with a European Defence Fund, a European Defence Agency and Partnership for Peace, which is a travesty of the English language because it is a partnership for war.

Our voices should be used over and over to stop the war in Ukraine and to stop what Israel is doing and the genocide going on. I would like to hear our voices used for this and not sidelined into tinkering with the triple lock, which is simply unacceptable. It is an insult to the Defence Forces which have served us well. If anything captured this lately, it was the announcement of the withdrawal of our peacekeeping forces from Lebanon, or the Golan Heights, to have them ready for a battlefield. They cannot participate in it but they have to be ready for the day they need to go into battle at the helm of von der Leyen and Borrell who have talked about Europe as a garden and everything else outside of it as a jungle.

This is the usual response

'always trying to put the blame on the West'

She quite simply isn't doing that.
Like me, she believes blame is shared in most conflicts/wars. She at least tries to speak truth to that.

Well, if being incoherent now and again was a crime, the prisons would be full tbh.

Good we have establisheed she was at least trying to make a distinction even if it made no sense to you. I got it straight away. I think her fulsome praise for the work of the Defence Forces was the giveaway.