Politics

This week saw calls in the Dáil chamber for a referendum on the bank bailout and the IMF-EU deal. The motion, tabled by the Technical Group, was debated on Tuesday and Wednesday evening. As is procedure, the government tabled an amendment to the motion (effectively a counter-motion) in the name of the Minister for Finance. On Wednesday evening this amendment was voted on with the government winning the vote by 119 votes to 27, thereby defeating the Technical Group motion.

After a few weeks in the Dáil Chamber, you’d think I’d be settling in at this stage. I’m not so sure. Maybe it should be important not to ever get too settled in a structure that is in much need of change. Despite all warnings to the contrary, I have had the privilege of speaking in the chamber every day since it opened – being part of the Technical Group of Independents has certainly worked out well with regard to gaining speaking rights.

After a few weeks in the Dáil Chamber, you’d think I’d be settling in at this stage. I’m not so sure. Maybe it should be important not to ever get too settled in a structure that is in much need of change. Despite all warnings to the contrary, I have had the privilege of speaking in the chamber every day since it opened – being part of the Technical Group of Independents has certainly worked out well with regard to gaining speaking rights.

The government shoud reconfigure its priorities and consider those stakeholders who have yet to receive any consideration - the people - Peader Tóibín told the Dáil on Wednesday.

Nicholas Shaxson, author of the acclaimed Treasure Islands, brings together the evidence and concludes that Ireland is a tax haven - one which saw $1.8 trillion moved by multinationals through subsidiaries in the IFSC and reinvested overseas in 2009.

Below is the full text of Stephen Donnelly TD's speech in support of the motion tabled in the Dáil on Tuesday 5 April that the government hold a referendum on the bank bailout and the EU-IMF loan package arrangement. The full text of the motion is available here.

Ireland's press regulation system is quietly going about its business, like a submarine beneath the surface of the media world, writes Angela Long

 There’s no great problems with press misbehaviour in our land, it would seem from the man who ‘polices’ it, the Press Ombudsman, John Horgan.

 Only two of 315 complaints he received last year were sufficiently intractable to go to the Press Council. Resolution of one kind or another settled most, while some complaints were found to have no substance.

The murder of Ronan Kerr was killing for killing’s sake, Alan Shatter told the Dail, in a speech that was moving but pulled no punches. 

Ronan Kerr was a young Catholic man whose only wish was to serve his community – that he chose to do so by joining the Police Service of Northern Ireland is a sign of how far the people of Northern Ireland have embraced hope. That he now lies dead is a sign of the despair into which these criminal terrorists wish to drag us.

The culture of greed and complacency that drove our nation over the precipice cannot be pinned on the banks alone, writes Vincent Browne.

Patrick Honohan said last Thursday the Irish banking crisis was "the most expensive in banking history". The scale of the economic downturn is by far the worst in the developed world.

We are in danger of losing forever to emigration a generation of young, highly qualified people. What has happened is a major calamity for this society and a great many of us are to blame. Perhaps it is time we owned up.

Politicians showed a lack of knowledge, or even interest, in the lengthy but explosive Moriarty report, writes Vincent Browne

The two main speakers on the government side in the Dáil, Enda Kenny and Pat Rabbitte, said nothing at all of consequence, supposedly inhibited in what they could say lest they prejudice further investigations and possibly criminal prosecutions. There was a reasonable turnout of backbench government TDs present when Enda Kenny was speaking. Immediately afterwards most of them left the chamber.