General Irish politics discussion thread

Hell no, but it won't be up to Leo it'll be up to Micheal who gets the FF cabinet seats.

The FF front bench really is a complete vacuum of lack of political talent so who else is he going to pick!

The Twitterati disgracing themselves again by making it about the government rather than Vicky?

If I recall correctly, Leo Varadkar issued a State apology some years ago. Maybe you and the nasties on Twitter have forgotten that.

Will you ever have some dignity, and stop trying to start another row as a woman has just died.

"Thanks to her tireless efforts, despite the terrible personal toll she herself had to carry, so many women's lives have been protected, and will be protected in the future."

President Higgins has called it, she did achieve many things, there has been change. You are selectively exploiting a victim for political reasons again.

I am not dignifying your victim exploitation with a response. Plenty of time to dig through old quotes and see where progress has been made in the days ahead to respond to your simplistic inaccurate narrative but today isn't the day.

Well said, a valiant attempt was made to cover this up and only for this woman's refusal to be silenced it would still be under wraps. We are seeing another attempt to silence here.

The media do highlight the large amount of US donors to Sinn Féin, this means Sinn Féin are heavily influenced by their largest donors in the US - a problem if Sinn Féin are in Government here because our domestic and foreign policies would be dictated by Sinn Féin's donors in the US who we know nothing about.

No party receives as many donations as Sinn Fein and no other party hides them in the North away from the eyes of SIPO. The legacy from the UK was a prime example.

We don't know what they've hidden. If we knew, it wouldn't be hidden. That's what "hidden" means.

The point is that NI rules on the disclosure of political donations and on the amounts that can be donated are much, much laxer than in IRL (or GB; that's why a million-dollar donation to fund Brexit ads running in GB newspapers was channelled through the DUP — remember?) As SF is organised both north and south of the border, it has the opportunity to accept donations that could not be accepted in IRL, and to evade scrutiny of its funding sources by routing them through NI rather than IRL. These opportunities are not available to FF, FG, etc, so we know much more about their funding than we do about SF's.

That only proves the point being made. Those disclosures relate only to donations in the South, not in the North. Nobody knows how much is donated in the North because it is hidden.

Heather's letter writing in the spotlight again.

Curiously Heather is out this morning denying something the article never claimed.

Translation: Hire Me!

Smacks of nominating peers in the HoC when a PM goes, did Paschal, in one of his final acts as Finance Minister, sucumb to former FG minister Brian Hayes persisent lobbying for this?

Well, its' better than being in bed with Lavrov and Putin, which the main opposition party was for many a year.

Remember the times they voted AGAINST sanctions for Russia after Salsbury? The refused to believe Interpol, and the EU's intelligence that Russia was responsible for Salsbury.

Fun times. Since the invasion, they promptly deleted years of press releases hoping to hide their past deeds, like their bothers the PIRA burying the bodies of McConville and Co.

Anyway, back to Iran, yes I would agree that the embassy should not be reopened. A shame Doherty is only coming around to the fact there are oppressive regimes in the world. Didn't he stand shoulder to shoulder with a number of Central and South American Tyrants?

Stones, and glass houses come to mind. When it comes to Iran and Russia, best they STFU for a few years in the hope people forget that they stood with these regimes and protected them in the EU parliament for many many years.

Yet Russia did not vote for Ireland be on the UNSC, oddly enough. You seem to think its a trump card, but its not. Its a piss poor attempt to say 'Look over there!'.

Stones and glass house Francie. Your past staunch defence of Russian Imperialism and aggression to the West is well recorded and documented on this forum. Best not get me riled up to dig out your quotes on this matter ;)