Enda Kenny survived his confidence motion today. There are rumours that there were 6 votes in it. There were 70 people voting.
While you can’t argue with him winning – this is the choice of the Fine Gael Parliamentary party’s choice – there is the more than inconvenient issue that a lot of people who vote [...]

Back in the days that I was in college doing a module on translation technology, one of our lecturers talked about a concept of the “green dream”, particularly with respect to translators; how being connected to data communications service would make it possible for you/anyone to export translation services to anywhere in the world because [...]

For various reasons I am looking at going back to college next autumn. In fact, the whole college thing has been under consideration for three or four months but the bastardisation of semesterisation in Irish colleges means that on average, intake is in autumn and that is it. This is in contrast to Germany where [...]

31 March 2010. This should go down as a seminal day in Irish economic history.

Quinn Insurance into administration
1200 bank loans transferred to NAMA on a haircut of 47% on average. Two building societies facing annihilation.
8 billion transferred to the systemically important Anglo Irish Bank. Because saving it is less expensive than closing it.
AIB and Bank [...]

Down. Basically, down. How far down is the problem. I don’t know. And over what time frame, difficult.
But

falling incomes
general CPI deflation
increased property supply
increasing tax burden
increasing interest rates
increasing unemployment
collapse in inward migration
increase in net emigration

This suggests downwards in the short term.
On the other hand

government action by way of moratoria on repossession proceedings
government action on properties securing [...]

According to a breaking news report on the Irish Times site yesterday, the government intends to raise 1 billion euro from next year by metering water usage. This was made known, apparently, by John Gormley during an RTE interview. I’m absolutely fascinated that one of our ministers can be so unutterably dumb; I long ago [...]

Brendan O’Connor, high profile writer for the Sunday Independent, biggest selling Sunday newspaper in Ireland, writes today that there is “no use cursing the day we mounted the property ladder“.
I would like to highlight the fact that just because he’s high profile doesn’t mean I think he’s any good (I think he’s not) or that [...]

on the plus side, the time I put into cleaning the gas fire this morning has resulted in a functioning gas fire. I am very happy about this as the living room is now less than subArctic.
On the plus side, i discovered I’ve got great, great neighbours. The copper pipe for the garden tap burst [...]

I could write a long introspective piece about the property market in Ireland, hopes and dreams dashed and how reality hurts sometimes. But i’ve worked out that location wise, Dublin appears to be the best place for me short of moving to San Francisco which could be very lonely and apart from the weather, its [...]

Dermot Ahern is the bright spark who brought us blasphemy legislation. Now he wants to set up a DNA database. Unfortunately RTE are a bit sparse on the details about this.
I have no objection to a DNA database per se, however, that objection is dependent on it being of a non-Big Brother variety of database [...]