General Irish politics discussion thread

https://m.independent.ie/irish-news/courts/ex-fine-gael-councillor-jailed-for-stealing-172000-from-charity-and-spending-it-on-male-escorts-and-drugs/a1917725083.html

Fine Gael the party of law and order 😂😂

All getting very tetchy in FF,
I was surprised 3 senior members ratchetting up the pressure. Martin is firing out scolding press releases.

Indeed. Anyway I'm sure Harris will be reading it into the Dail record whenever he has his next joust with 'Angry Pearse'.

That said, he is the last major remnant of the government that crashed the country

If they ever want to move past the toxic label, he has to go.

In the 2011 election they were down to just 20 seats, it's been a slow recovery but a very big one that nobody could see coming in fairness so I agree. He will go when he is ready and deservedly so

O'Callaghan would have to f*** up badly now not to be.

Chambers is mortally wounded. He doesn't have the credit in the bank to get away from his part in selection-gate as easily as MM. And he's not half the operator either Martin or O'Callaghan are.

And O'Callaghan is already proving to be one of the more impactful cabinet members, in only his first year in a senior portfolio.

He is calm, learned, interrogative, and he understands the boundaries of his role, but how to make himself most effective in cabinet and with his senior civil servants and agency chiefs.

His podcast interview with the Irish Times earlier in the week is a good listen, he comes across impressively. He accepts what he doesn't know, and cannot do, but he has good arguments for what he wants to achieve. In other words he doesn't come across as a spoofer. His deep experience as a senior counsel definitely comes across in his style. And I say so as a Fine Gael member.

But the most demonstrative thing about him is that he understands absolutely that now is not the time to challenge MM, and that he must be patient and build trust and profile for the next 18 months or so.

If you target your party member's wishes only you'll only ever be a small party.

Parliamentary party members have been elected by the public and represent the public. Their views should be massively more important than a person in a small cumann somewhere.

While the ‘how dare you question us’ crew will be getting their jollies you either take the constitution seriously or you don’t.

Definitely should have been challenged and in the Supreme Court if deemed necessary.

Mod: warned for trolling

The Irish Times took that quote from an interview for Politico. Bannon randomly threw that in. Of course he is not serious but they took the bait. It's a cheap destabilisation play he is involved in in European countries for some reason.

It should be ignored.

Even if some populist crank was to emerge, they would never be able to get into power in Ireland. None of the other Dáil parties would co-operate with them and certainly no party would be interested in bringing them into government.

People might point to the example of Farage in the UK, but they have a dysfunctional political system and a right wing press. Even the BBC were and heavily involved in platforming him for many years (and still are) and making him seem 'credible'.

It's mad that the US ambassador to Ireland was at that...