Maman Poulet

Tonight in Trinity College Dublin a meeting of the Oireachtas Committee on the Constitution will take place to discuss electoral reform. It’s believed to be the first time that the committee will have met outside the Oireachtas to debate. Discussions at the meeting will include presentations by members of the public on electoral reform. (Yes I know the meeting is only down the road, but you never know what this may have started! The decentralisation of the Dáil and Seanad cannot be too far away!)

Tonights meeting will then be followed by a panel discussion chaired by John Bowman with participants including Noel Dempsey, Minister for Transport, Professor Ken Benoit, head of the Department of Political Science, Senator Ivana Bacik, Trinity Fellow, Sean Ardagh, Chair of the Joint Oireachtas Committee, Jim O’Keeffe, Vice Chair of the Joint Oireachtas Committee and The Hon. Mr. Justice Frank Clarke.

The event is hosted by TCD JS Irish Politics (3rd year) class and TCD Department of Political Science.

There will be a liveblog and webcast, more information can be found on TheStory.ie.  I’ll be liveblogging at some stage hopefully if the wifi goddesses oblige! So please join in and we’ll try and get some points across from the viewing public!

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I’ll be in Dublin Castle tomorrow at the National Count Centre with Cian and Alexia and a load of foreign media scratching their heads and wondering what is going on!

There is a liveblog already established for the count results and we are looking forward to pulling in news from around the country as the tallies come in. Cian posts about how to contact us with information and as usual in Irish blogging/online crowdsourcing and all hands on deck is the way to go.

Thanks in advance for helping out if you are at a count or otherwise following results. If you have contacts outside of Ireland who may be interested in keeping in touch with things you should point them in the direction of the liveblog and also to additional coverage and analysis on Irishelection.com.

I’m voting later today and will be on the look out for Cóirites monitoring the goings on. Watching them watching us eh? We even have a blog for watching the votes go in.

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It’s a perfect August story – two years to the election and the bookies have a poll on it. Who’s going to be the next president of Ireland?

Fergus Finlay is a bit surprised at his mention, last week I heard Niall Crowley’s name a few times as a possible Labour nominee. Is nobody mentioning Michael D.?

Paddy Power has Bertie Ahern at 2/1, Brian Crowley at 4/1 and Fergus Finlay at 10/1. Ivan Yates is at 20/1 which has me half wondering if I can start the ‘elect Ivan now’ campaign if it means I don’t have to listen to him on the radio!

You can read the full list of odds here. Any names not mentioned that you would throw into the hat? And what will Fine Gael do? Could it be Avril versus Mairead all over again? Or will Sean Kelly (the GAA Sean rather than Rothar Sean) or Gay Mitchell get the nod for the candidacy instead?

(and no I don’t really want Ivan Yates as President of Ireland but maybe we could send him to Brussels never to be heard from again?)

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Understatement!

I’ll let other people talk about the liveblog and the results. The weekend was stunning on a personal note and it was brilliant to work with Cian, Alexia, Mark, and Damien over Saturday and Sunday in bringing it all to life and have inputs from so many others around the country. Thanks again to D4 hotels for the room for the blogger HQ and like many of the readers and commenters on the live blog it seems people are saying roll on the General Election and online media bringing news to people who are interested and those who claim not to be intersted but really are!

I’m very tired but have had a few thoughts simmering – excuse the babble!

• Yes there was a huge wave of anger against this government and people took it out on them and the Greens in particular.  I’m going to mention one factor – the removal of the Xmas bonus – don’t mess with the older people! Time and again this election I’ve heard it said in anger – it’s bigger than the mess with the banks as a reason people voted.

• Dublin Councils are going to be great fun to watch for the next 4 years – All shades of the ‘left’ in the majority? – Labour polled extremely well in Dublin City and elsewhere and with SF, People Before Profit (Yes I know I’m not alone in thinking the Swimmies change name and get 5 seats in Dublin!) various Independents and the Socialist party polling well on Joe’s wings it’s going to be messy.   FF only have 18 seats or so out of 130 seats in the 4 Dublin councils.  Berties Dubs have deserted the party.  And Mannix Flynn will be very interesting to watch – I would like one of his posters I believe he’ll be tweeting where to meet him to get one when he takes them down on Tuesday.

• Lots of women were elected and I look forward to seeing the stats on the candidates and how many got elected. Now can we see if there would be more transparency in politics as a result? And will the many forthcoming selection conventions for Dail tickets see an end to women candidates who have done the work being pushed aside for parachute candidates. Many many other questions there…

• Frank McBrearty Jnr got elected! (Despite vandalism of posters and rows in street with Pat ‘The Cope’ Gallagher and also Labour not having any organsiation of note in Donegal)

• Maureen O’Sullivan TD – nobody saw that coming – but nobody in media would admit they didn’t see it coming either yesterday when they were so lovely about her! Well done to the Gregory Group!

• And yes there is a bit of me sad for Paschal Donohue who became a bit of a personal favourite for his tweeting and his personal blog and media coverage and the rotweiller emerging from a puppy.  He worked extremely hard and survived being knocked down by a car and having Enda in his ear constantly.

• Simon Harris – you will remember him – 4 quotas for Greystones Town Council? And elected to Wicklow County Council also on over 1.5 quotas! Surely the mascot must have been thanked in his speech?

• The look of bewilderment on Green Party faces – is it political naiveity?  To quote a person I heard at a Labour party coalition conference 17 years ago if  ‘you lie down with dogs you get up with fleas’.  And I know it’s really sad to lose one’s seat and 14 councillors lost their seats – someone texted me yesterday and said ‘maybe a lot of those green jobs announced in the last month still need filling…’ ouch.  From watching their party conference earlier this year I know there is a lot of soul searching going on – well the search needs to end and the party needs to cop on and call their partners on more than a few things and stop ignoring them like they don’t exist. It’s not like FF want to run to the polls anytime soon is it?

• Lisa Connell got 229 first preferences in the Dublin South West Inner City Constituency.

• RTE had a terrible election results weekend  – sport took precedence over radio coverage which is usually the must listen to at election time. I don’t want to hear it was only the locals/euros – this was the most important mid term election in decades and they went missing on Saturday Afternoon and evening and until 9pm last night.  The money must be really running out in RTE ?  Or were they worried about offending someone?

• Newstalk played a blinder with their RDS stage and webcam. Local radio was a joy to tune into – Highland radio, Shannonside, Radio Kerry amongst the ones I and others listened to.  Some local papers were on the ball too with publication of counts online and also twittering from counts – The Mayo News, Westmeath Examiner and Tallaght Echo stand up and take a bow!

• Will George Lee TD continue his town hall meetings? When will we know more about George’s thoughts on things other than the economy?

• Next time the Irish Times do a Campaign Watch blog, well I hope they think before they write – it was really below par for the Irish Times who are the leading media outlet for blogging and the paper of record. It was as bad as the Phoenix on a slow week and sometimes worse than reading the Star on Sunday at times.

And finally for all those wheelie bins out there – time to fight back against those who are looking for you and claim you went missing!

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This weekend is like Christmas for some (ok me) – tallying and watching transfers and predicting and the like.

At IrishElection.com we’re running a liveblog which will collate information as we can get it from counts around the country. More coverage on the election will also be found on the the blog including links to other peoples blogs, videos, pictures etc.  Please come join us and contribute your thoughts and information.

Many thanks to D4 hotels who have provided the Blogger HQ for today! Much appreciated and we’ll be blogging from there later this morning.

If anyone needs to email anything to me (Tally spreadsheets would be especially welcome!) please send to tips (@) mamanpoulet.com

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Lisa Connell is standing as an Independent LGBT Candidate in Dublin South West Inner City/Dublin 8 area of Dublin City Council.

Lisa is not the first independent LGBT candidate to contest an election in Ireland – the first I believe was Liz Noonan who ran as a Lesbian Feminist Candidate in 3 Dáil elections in 1981 and twice in 1982 in Dublin South East.

In the 1989 General Election a number Independent Gay Candidates ran campaigns – Tonie Walsh in Dublin South East, Don Donnelly in Dublin North Central and Michael Foley (Pastor of the Metropolitan Community Church) who got 1,122 first preferences and ran in Dublin South Central and I think there was a third candidate and will correct the post when I get an answer to an email!

In 1992 there were considerations towards running gay rights candidates (it was before decrminialisation) but instead campaigns to get parties to commit to equality and decriminalisation were run by lesbian and gay groups.

In terms of local and national elections since 1992 we’ve had a number of openly gay candidates running for election in several parties and there are some running in the local elections this year.

This year it seems we’re back to the 1980’s in terms of seeing an Independent LGBT Candidate join the fray. I’ll be back to the issue of single issue campaigns and lgbt rights no doubt but for now you can find out more on Lisa’s Facebook page and see links to various other media appearance.

I met Lisa last week and asked her why she was standing for election on an Independent LGBT based candidacy. (I’m still learning how to use the Zi6 – apologies for wobbles etc!)

Update:

Tonie Walsh has been in touch to confirm the third candidate in 1989 General Election (Michael Foley) and also to tell of his own campaign to run for election to Dublin Corporation in 1985 on an urban renewal, tenancy rights and better local government ticket.  So that’s the first openly gay candidate who ran for Dublin Corporation sorted  – and I’ll leave it to Tonie to tell the full story of his campaign, selection and manager – there’s a chapter in a book there HINT!

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ah oops wrong sport sorry..

Find out who own’s this Mascot, who’s been putting up Maurice Ahern’s posters in Dublin Central and what Fianna Fáil candidates are experiencing on the ground in the latest round up on Irishelection.com

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Thanks to the tip off I received and a break in the weather I headed up to see Enda Kenny and Fine Gael’s European Parliament Election Candidates unveil their poster for the campaign a few hours ago.

It was interesting to see who turned up and who didn’t.  Gay Mitchell MEP the lone candidate running in Dublin was first to arrive, followed by Enda Kenny who seemed to be minding Senator John Paul Phelan.  Phelan needs a bit of minding given that Mairead McGuinness seems not to want acknowledge him at all in her race to top the poll in the East consituency. Last to arrive was Senator Joe O’Reilly from the North-West Constituency. No sign of Jim Higgins, Sean Kelly, Colm Burke or Mairead herself.

Following a press gaggle where Kenny probably called on the Greens to walk from government and the like, (It was all a bit much for me to muscle in to get to hear) he bounded across the road (nearly jaywalking) and headed for the cherry picker.  You can watch the rest below and no doubt see the pictures on the TV news later on and in tomorrows papers.

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They’re down to 3% in the TNS/MRBI Poll however tomorrow the Green Party are launching their local election manifesto and a new election website.

And in the fine tradition of the Irish Blogosphere finding all the Political Party’s new websites first (ok so they did not really hide it too well  – I just went clicking) here is the link to the website for you to poke about, see what’s working and not, and find out funny bits about your local candidate.

Happy hunting!

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So anyone received a phonecall from one of the 15 full time ‘genuine Libertas volunteers‘ (free lunch provided!) doing phonebanking and making calls to 100,000 households?

I know it’s been underway for a few weeks but wonder what the pitch is now as we are well into the campaign? Any Dublin Calls being made or is it specially targetted at the East constituency? Stories welcome!

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