General Irish politics discussion thread

FG will be weakened without him though. He has been their Mr dependable throught their govt formations. Viewed by many as the leader behind the scenes.

Anyway, I wish him well in his new career.

Ah that's okay so……unvouched expenses = dip your hands into taxpayers pockets, no receipts required. All supported by Paschal.

McAdam has no chance. Donohoe himself could only get elected on the 55th count or whatever whlst rarely reaching the quota.

You all know I'm an FG member. I supported Coveney over Varadkar and I was ambivalent about Harris.

He has made more errors in leadership than successes, and thats not a great recipe for entering the Finance portfolio.

I'm also not thrilled with McEntee in FA T&D, I think she was just finding her feet in Education and had the potential to do good things there.

As for JCMN, I know her personally, she relishes taking on Health, and wild horses would not have dragged her away from it yet. She is determined with every fibre of her being to destroy the intransigent blob of Boards and senior mandarins are the cause of most of the sclerosis in Health. If she can advance that, she'll be ready for any other job down the line, party leader, Tánaiste, Taoiseach, whatever.

And so, in my view, it should have been Chartered Accountant and other major economic portfolio holder Peter Burke into Finance, moved Patrick O'Donovan into Enterprise and brought Hildegarde Naughton into cabinet in Culture and Sport, while leaving the Tánaiste in his current portfolio, which needs continuity and momentum ahead of the EU Presidency in 7 months time.

If Harris misses some steps in Finance, and I think he is likely to, it will hasten his end as party leader, and will be gone well ahead of the next major elections.

They do understand.

The whole questioning of it is a clear attempt to undermine our democracy.

I'm also a FG memeber and echo your views. I can't believe SH and HME and both the top dogs with top jobs.

I'm just so unimpressed with how the party looks and who's in it. No heavyweights.

I don't believe Paschal ever truly wanted the leadership.

He might have thought about it when Varadkar stepped down, but you can't convince me that the old stock of the PP just went for Harris at the level they did without contemplating if Paschal wanted it.

I would disagree with it not being earthshattering.

I think its because 'Prudent Paschal' is quite a calm and very methodical person, somewhat autistic in nature, and he has never blown his own trumpet, avoided the leadership wrangles etc, that people often overlook the scale of what he has achieved.

Just three years out of the Troika bailout, he stewarded the public finances back into current surplus. And since then he has been involved in 10 budgets as either or both economic Ministers, which have grown the exchequer from 50 to 120 billion Euros, skyrocketed GDP, GNI*, employment rates and household wealth; slashed the national debt from its peak of 123% of GDP to 31% at the end of this year, which he did DESPITE underpinning the entire economy on exchequer IOUs during two and a half years of COVID!

He ALSO did all that under the spectre of Brexit chaos and global geopolitical upheaval, runaway inflation and energy market earthquakes, while championing policies which actually turned both crises largely to Ireland's advantage AND writing huge cheques for every household in the country to get rebates on their bills.

He established two sovereign wealth funds in the name of the people, exited the last vestige of State ownership of the Banks post-crash, and signed off on a Two Hundred Billion Euro national investment plan over the next 15 years.

And he did so by being absolutely spot-on in his judgement of whether budgets should be cautious or expansionsary. Only last month he was still telling his cabinet colleagues, you can either shave a few quid off taxes for middle income earners OR cut VAT to hospitality, but not both, not while he's in the job.

I mean, just imagine getting through all those years and not succumbing to the huge political pressure inherent in the Irish system to spend it if you have it. In the process, he has broken our opioid like dependency on pro-cyclical economics and left things on a more sustainable footing than they ever have been before.

Not earthshattering? If you compared his achievements to those of the economy of any large open democracy, you'd put him on Mount f**king Rushmore.

Cyprian got 2.7% FPV from under 1000 votes, quite possibly the lowest FPV% and vote total to get elected to the Dáil.

2400 transfers on count 1 from Bertie, and 2400 when Mary Fitzpatrick (almost certainly the FF candidate for this BE) went out got him up.