"This election provided an opportunity to win the kind of specific mandate for the radical action that is needed to resolve the national crisis..this has not happened and Fine Gael is primarily to blame.."
The second Haughey Government has been like the last months of the Nixon administration. It has stumbled from crisis to crisis, some of its own making, others occurring by the strokes of cruel luck. The Government was fated to fall sooner or later. It was sooner.
Some things are still the same, third time around. The manners of some RTE camera crews, for instance.
The Labour Party conference is likely to exclude the possibility of another Coalition after the next election, unless a major effort is made to reverse the trend of delegates' support by the Labour Party establishment in the weeks leading up to the conference in Salthill on October 23 and 24.
Offaly's victory in this year's All Ireland Football Final was no fluke. This was a victory for a side which not only was so defensively disciplined that it was able to knock Kerry out of their usual freeflowing style, but which was also confident enough to attack with boldness. Both teams in this final proved that the days of a rigid 3-3-2-3-3 in GAA Football line up are numbered. It is to Offaly's credit that they were able to outplay Kerry with such a brand of total football.
Maurice Manning watches the 1982 election count, in which he was elected TD for Dublin North East.
Alan Shatter was talking about the Social Welfare Bill, second stage. It was 2.25pm, there was one other Fine Gael TD in the Chamber, one Labour and five Fianna Fail.
From Ballinasloe to the Burlington, Charlie Haughey presides over the rituals of the tribe, By Gene Kerrigan.
Should Fianna Fail fail to win the East Galway by-election, Charlie Haughey's position as Taoiseach and leader of the party would be under further threat, possibly fatal threat.
Charlie Haughey has gone broke and has been forced to sell Kinsealy. He was unable to pay a bill for the hire of a Helicopter in the last year. He is badly in hock to a merchant bank. He is involved in an affair with a well known television personality (female)jwith a well known journalist (also female). It is perhaps a tribute to the pervasiveness of his personality that Charlie Haughey rumours, such as the above, dominate much oj the social gossip of Dublin. Haughey himself used to be mildly amused by such stories - he once said one should believe every rumour one hears.