General Irish politics discussion thread

I presume he means the numbers of Irish abortions in the UK, which was always likely to have been understated by Irishwomen giving English addresses. AFAIK since legalisation the numbers here have always been 6-7000+.

I'm not sure what figures were expected but I don't see that as being the main issue anyway. Ultimately these are women making up their minds not to proceed with a pregnancy, for whatever reason. If Toibin is so concerned about the figures, maybe he could have a think about why so 'many' women are making that decision rather than trying to take that right away from them.

Bleak very bleak, will be very interesting to see what Irish politicians end up at this.

https://www.independent.ie/county/wicklow/ireland-to-host-secret-gathering-of-political-tech-finance-and-defence-elites-leaked-report/a/157371354.html

They're all looking over their shoulder at II and Aontu, and it's old story of who shouts loudest gets heard first.

Troy has already been re-elected since the revelations about his non-declaration of extensive property interests, so I suspect this won't affect him very much.

I'd agree re both, but as I said it's who shouts loudest. You'd think Galway West would have given FG a bit of backbone, but no. FF were always in thrall to the bead-rattlers so they didn't surprise me.

Aontu are effectively unable to transfer polling figures in to votes as their candidates are, with limited exceptions, unknowns, weirdos or both. They are sticking with a Councillor in Wexford who tried to ask someone coming to him for assistance on a date for instance.

It's a personality cult around one person who only has so many family members to run in other seats.

They did very poorly in the recent by-elections. They have two TDs, one of which got in on poor transfer management by FF and FG; and only one or two candidates that will be near the top end of the table on FPV beyond that.

Vote tally

Yes FF 12 FG 11

No FF 30 FG 23

https://www.thejournal.ie/abortion-td-votes-7074713-Jun2026/

looks like SF will have the casting vote over whether there is any further liberalisation of abortion in this dail or the next…

Oh I agree polls are meaningless, but I do think there's something to be said against the more conservative FF or FG politicians trying to tack right to try and woo the II or Aontu voters. They're not going to get them, so don't tack that way.

Donaldson found guilty and his wife to be complicit as well. In the realms of northern politics this has been a shocking case and the unionist leader to be found guilty of such crimes is a huge scandal for unionist politics.

The UK will be onto their 7th PM in less than 10 years. Cameron resigned, Sunak lost an election. The rest of them were ousted by their party.

In the same period we've had 5 changes of Taoiseach (with 4 people holding office) , but nobody was ousted by a heave, there weren't motions of no confidence or anything like that.

The great offices if state in UK are PM plus Chancellor, home secretary and foreign secretary. In the past 10 years there have been:

7 different PMs. 8 chancellors of exchequer, 10 foreign secretarys and 10 home secretarys.

The comparable ministries here are finance, foreign affairs and justice. So we have had 6 terms for Taoiseach (4 people), 6 finance minister terns (5 people), 7 foreign affairs ministers and 5 ministers for justice (plus 2 who covered role while Helen McEntee was on mat leave).

There's obviously a bit of churn on the Irish side too, but it's nowhere as mental as the UK has been since Brexit.

There's a big churn on here too though in fairness. A lot more dissent, the cost of living, immigration, fuel prices and taxes. The health service in a mess etc etc. And we haven't had a brexit, but people are unhappy and govts have been cobbled together with a mixture old party's holding on with the help of various loons really. I know this has happened before, but it was with single party's, not the cobbled together FF/FG +.