This pisses me off.
The gov have the money but choose not to do anything.
It’s a political choice to do nothing.
Just like it’s a political choice to find money when farmers and truckers block the roads.
Fuck FF/FG.
#ireland #fiannafail #finegael #homeless #homeless #timeforchange
Homelessness: Record number in emergency accommodation, including new high for children
https://www.thejournal.ie/homelessness-emergency-accommodation-april-7055318-May2026/
Sport and Politics
I have found this a very disappointing weekend in many respects for sports. Two Irish rugby teams (Ulster and Leinster) both lost their cup finals against French opposition (Montpellier and Bordeaux in the Challenge Cup and Champions Cup, respectively). Glamorgan’s cricketers lost their first two Twenty20 games of the season (both narrowly). And today’s last round of matches in the English Premier League saw Newcastle lose, an outcome made worse by the fact that Sunderland won.
At least however there was an opportunity to enjoy Ireland’s greatest spectator sport (after hurling, of course): the counting of votes in an election. Friday saw two by-elections, one because of the resignation of Paschal Donohoe (FG) from his seat in Dublin Central in order to take a lucrative job at the World Bank, and the other vacated by Catherine Connolly whose seat in Galway West became vacant when she took on the role of President. Neither of these are constituencies in which I could vote, but it was fun watching the results come on.
These elections, like all elections in Ireland, were held under a system of Proportional Representation (Single Transferable Vote). The constituences return multiple members in a General Election, but in the case of a by-election only one candidate is elected. This simplifies matters a bit because the part of the process that involves transferring surplus votes from candidates who exceed quota is not needed. Voters rank the candidates in order of preference with votes progressively reallocated as the lowest-ranked candidates are eliminated. You can rank all the candidates or just some. In the system employed here one ranks the candidates in order of preference with votes progressively reallocated in various rounds until one ends up with one winner.
There was also the presence of gang leader Gerard Hutch among the candidates in Dublin Central, but in the end he didn’t put up a serious challenge.
Opinion polls gave Sinn Féin’s Janice Boylan a narrow lead on first preferences, but since SF are notoriously transfer-unfriendly, I was very confident that lead would be overturned by Daniel Ennis of the Social Democrats. As it turned out, however, Ennis actually led on first preferences which confirmed me in my opinion that he would win. This is how the transfers panned out.
Ennis won comfortably, and John Stephens of Fianna Fáil gaining the distinction of getting the lowest share of first preference votes that his party has ever recorded in an election. There are some bizarre transfers, e.g. from the left-wing PBP (People Before Profit) to Fine Gael. Other than that the outcome was as predicted.
Not long ago Sinn Féin were riding high in the polls and might have expected to win a seat here, especially since Mary Lou McDonald, the Sinn Féin leader, holds a seat in Dublin Central, but their popularity has slumped. I think that’s primarily because they have recently lurched to the right – rather like UK Labour has – and many who want a genuinely progressive alternative to the crumbling neoliberal consensus have decided that they can’t support SF which puts on the mask of a progressive party when it suits them but are quite to remove it when chasing the right-wing vote. is quoted as saying that there is ‘no confusion’ for voters about whether the party was left-wing or right-wing. I think she is correct there, but perhaps not in the way she intended…
A genuinely left-wing party of the size of Sinn Féin should be building coalitions and knocking at the door to power, but instead it has squandered its position by pandering to anti-immigrant sentiment, jumping on the bandwagon of the recent “fuel protests” and signing up to transphobic policies in Northern Ireland. I don’t understand why they have chosen this path, but it looks very foolish to me. I’m not the only one to think this. Is Morgan McSweeney now working for Sinn Féin?
As I write, the count in Galway West is still going on but it has come down to a contest between two unpalatable right-wing candidates so I’m not following it as closely. Oh, the Fine Gael candidate has won.
#DanielEnnis #FiannaFáil #FineGael #SinnFein #SocialDemocrats
Fianna Fáil's decline continues. Its #DublinCentral vote share is down from 44.5% in 2007, down to 4.2% today. That' is FF's lowest vote share in a Dáil election in the party's 100 year history.
In #GalwayWest, the tally gives #FiannaFail barely 9%.
Taoiseach Micheál Martin narrowly survived the disaster of #JimGavin's candidacy in #Aras25. Can he stagger on after another disaster?
Dáil Éireann has voted against legislation seeking to impose #sanctions against #Israel, by 77 votes to 62
https://www.rte.ie/news/2026/0520/1574420-dail-israel-sanctions/
The Sanctions Against The State of Israel bill was tabled by #PeopleBeforeProfit, but opposed by the #FiannaFail / #FineGael government.
Neither genocide in #Gaza nor kidnapping the President's sister is enough to persuade #MichealMart8n and #SimonHarris to act. 😡
Talk is cheap.
Meanwhile, the Irish gov has been backpedaling on the Occupied Territories Bill for years.
Just the do-nothing FF/FG gov, doing nothing, as usual
https://www.rte.ie/news/middle-east/2026/0520/1574249-flotilla-gaza-israel/
#OccupiedTerritoriesBill #taoiseach #FiannaFáil #finegael #ireland
@kimlockhartga It definitely SHOULD be an international incident.
But I don't trust the Irish Government to take a strong stand. Neither #FiannaFail nor #FineGael is seriously committed to supporting Gaza, and they both have a long history of small gestures. So I don't see Ireland demanding EU support, which is the nain path by which this could become a bigger row.
“Teachers who use AI ‘will replace those who don’t’, the chair of the Oireachtas committee on artificial intelligence has warned.
Fianna Fáil TD Malcolm Byrne said he was worried Ireland was at risk of falling behind in discussions around how AI can be ‘responsibly integrated into our formal education system.’”
Fianna Fáil TD Malcolm Byrne is a fool who doesn’t have the first clue about what he’s taking about.
@IBIKEDublin I just realised. This is #Fiannafail's effort to increase the construction workforce. Forcing schoolkids and office commuters on bikes to cosplay builders will let them pretend they're solving the #housingcrisis
T3rc
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