Category Archives: Ireland

Irish general election: who won and what happens now?

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Weeks – possibly months – of negotiations are likely to follow Sinn Féin’s strong showing

Sinn Féin won the most first-preference votes – 24.5% – making it the most popular party and a strong contender to be included in the next government. Leo Varadkar’s ruling Fine Gael party slid to 20.8%, coming third, and Fianna Fáil, the main opposition party, also slipped, falling to 22.1% in second place. The rest of the vote was split between the Greens, on 7.1%, and small leftwing parties and independent candidates.

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Sinn Féin to try to form ruling coalition after Irish election success

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Party disrupts Ireland’s centrist tradition by taking almost a quarter of votes

Sinn Féin will try to form a government in Ireland after apparently winning more votes than any other party in Saturday’s general election – a historic result that upended the political system.

The party leader, Mary Lou McDonald, told cheering supporters on Sunday that a “revolution” had occurred and she would try to form a ruling coalition with other parties. “This is no longer a two-party system,” she said.

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Tired of a two-party system, Irish voters have made Sinn Féin mainstream

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Issues such as high rents and homelessness fuelled party’s 22.3% exit poll result

Sinn Féin’s breakthrough in Ireland’s general election was decades in the making, but not even Sinn Féin saw it coming.

Once a revolutionary party associated with guns and balaclavas, a toxic brand, it slowly edged from the fringe into the mainstream, inch by inch, and then on Saturday made a giant leap.

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Ireland general election: Sinn Féin surges to 22% in exit poll

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Republican party level with Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil in Saturday evening’s poll

Sinn Féin has scored dramatic gains in Ireland’s general election, according to an exit poll on Saturday night, realigning Irish politics and boosting the party’s chance of joining the next government.

The republican party won 22.3% of the vote while Leo Varadkar’s ruling Fine Gael party slumped to 22.4%, the poll said, potentially spelling an end to Varadkar’s tenure as taoiseach. Fianna Fáil, the main opposition party, won 22.2%.

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Ireland election: polls open with Sinn Féin poised to play key role

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Republican party is hoping poll surge will translate into a parliamentary breakthrough

Voters are going to the polls in Ireland after a tumultuous general election campaign during which Sinn Féin has surged into contention as a potential party of government.

The republican party hopes a rise in popularity among young and urban voters will translate into enough parliamentary gains to make it a kingmaker or participant in Ireland’s next coalition government.

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Man dubbed ‘largest facilitator’ of child abuse images pleads guilty

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Eric Eoin Marques, citizen of US and Ireland, faces up to 30 years in prison over web hosting service

A man once described by an FBI agent as the world’s largest “facilitator” of child abuse websites pleaded guilty on Thursday to operating a web hosting service that allowed users to anonymously access hundreds of thousands of images and videos depicting child abuse.

Eric Eoin Marques, 34, faces a mandatory minimum of 15 years in prison and a maximum of 30 years after his guilty plea to one count of conspiracy to advertise child abuse images. A plea agreement will ask the US district judge Theodore Chuang in Maryland to sentence Marques to 15 to 21 years in prison, but the judge is not bound by the recommendation.

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Sinn Féin steps up criticism of Irish rivals after shock poll lead

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Party leader says voters want change as poll puts it in top position for general election

Sinn Féin has stepped up its criticism of Ireland’s political establishment as polls show the party poised for a historic breakthrough in Saturday’s general election.

Mary Lou McDonald, Sinn Féin’s leader, said on Tuesday that Irish people wanted a change from Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil, centrist rivals that have dominated Irish politics for a century.

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The Varadkar paradox: feted abroad, can PM arrest polls slump in Ireland?

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From the outside, Leo Varadkar may seem like a leader on the crest of a wave, but as elections loom the tide is turning against him

Leo Varadkar, youthful leader, elegant dresser, liberal lion, responsible economic steward, banisher of Brexit clouds – what’s not to love? That, at least, is how many outsiders view Ireland’s taoiseach.

“Leo, Leo, Leo! We love you!” trilled some Chinese tourists who recently encountered him on Dublin’s Grafton Street, as he canvassed with Fine Gael party colleagues for votes in the 8 February general election.

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The Crown must handle IRA atrocity with ‘sensitivity’

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Mother of victim urges Netflix to be respectful and truthful as people still grieving today


The mother of a boy murdered by the IRA alongside Lord Louis Mountbatten has appealed to the makers of the The Crown to accurately depict the atrocity in the next season of the Netflix series.

Mary Hornsey said she hoped the drama would show sensitivity in portraying the events of 27 August 1979, when a bomb blew up Mountbatten’s fishing boat off Mullaghmore, a village in County Sligo on Ireland’s north-west coast.

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This was supposed to be Ireland’s climate election – what happened?

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Country was among first to declare climate emergency but health and housing take priority at ballot box

Ireland had seemed poised for its first climate-centric general election, with concern about carbon emissions and species extinction expected to shape the battle for votes on 8 February.

Last year, after all, Ireland became only the second country in the world to declare a climate and biodiversity emergency. “Great news from Ireland!! Who is next?” Greta Thunberg tweeted at the time.

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‘Like a bad romcom’: couple run against each other in Irish election

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Holly Cairns is standing against partner Christopher O’Sullivan in rural Cork constituency

To the duelling lovers in Ireland’s general election it feels like a “badly written romcom” but Hollywood is not involved … not yet anyway.

Holly Cairns, a Social Democrats candidate, is running against her partner, Christopher O’Sullivan, a candidate for Fianna Fáil, for the Cork South-West constituency.

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Brexit: No 10 insists fishing waters will be under UK control after Varadkar remarks – live news

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Rolling coverage of the day’s political developments as they happen

Here is the Times’s Steven Swinford on the significant of the PMOS’s comments on fishing.

No 10 spokesman suggests access to Britain’s waters for EU fishing boats *will* be the subject of negotiations over future trade deal

‘We are taking back control of our waters

‘It will be for the UK to determine for the best interests of the UK who fishes in those waters’

The PMOS is not talking about some of the post-Brexit Whitehall arrangements.

He says there will be 40 officials working in government taskforce on the EU future partnership.

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English journalist ‘trapped’ in Ireland over extradition bid

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Dublin court to consider European arrest warrant for Ian Bailey over unsolved murder of French woman

Ian Bailey, an English journalist-turned poet, has said he is trapped in Ireland because of an attempt to extradite him to France where he faces 25 years in jail for allegedly murdering a French film-maker, Sophie Toscan du Plantier.

A high court in Dublin will hold a hearing on Monday into a European arrest warrant issued by a Paris court, the latest twist in a legal saga over Ireland’s most notorious unsolved murder.

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Nearly a million Irish passports issued in record-breaking 2019

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Total monthly applications exceeded 100,000 in January, March, April and May

Almost a million Irish passports were issued in 2019, the country’s government has announced.

The figure is a new record and represents a 7% increase on 2018. Simon Coveney, Ireland’s foreign affairs minister, said: “2019 was another bumper year for the Passport Service. The award-winning Passport Online [service] expanded in 2019 to include first-time applicants in Ireland, Northern Ireland, Great Britain and Europe. Irish citizens including children can also renew their passports online 24/7, from anywhere in the world.”

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Varadkar dismisses Johnson plan to make EU pay for ‘interesting’ bridge

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Irish PM says UK must pay for any bridge between Northern Ireland and Scotland

Ireland’s prime minister has said he will not dismiss the idea of building a bridge between Northern Ireland and Scotland, but insisted the UK must pay for it.

Boris Johnson and the Democratic Unionist party have spoken in favour of the idea.

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‘I felt compelled to hug strangers’: a day at the gathering of my ancestral clan

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When Megan Nolan received her invitation, she wasn’t convinced of the importance of a shared name. Could 20 Nolans change her mind?

In June this year I received an email inviting me to Carlow, Ireland, to receive an award from the Nolan clan. The award was in recognition of my writing career, a little gesture of thanks for promoting the Nolan name in the world. I was dimly aware of Irish clans, largely from gift shops near tourism hotspots, where you can sometimes buy a horribly expensive sweater or scarf emblazoned with the family crest of your choice. I had no idea that they were a real-life concern.

I wasn’t living anywhere in particular. I had recently left my house in London because I couldn’t easily afford it and had tired of sharing with other people. So I answered my invitation from the clan immediately, accepting a little out of curiosity and a lot because in my transient state I would take any excuse to make my way back to Ireland, where I could loaf in my parents’ homes and not think much about money for a week.

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Brexit deal includes two-way customs checks, insists Ireland

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Foreign minister challenges Johnson’s claim about goods moving from Northern Ireland to Britain

Simon Coveney, Ireland’s foreign minister, has challenged Boris Johnson’s claim that under his Brexit deal there would be no checks or controls on goods moving between Northern Ireland and Britain.

Coveney insisted that under the terms of the withdrawal agreement the prime minister negotiated with the European Union there would be inspections on goods moving in both directions.

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Coats for homeless removed from Dublin’s Ha’penny Bridge

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Action by city authority for ‘public safety’ reasons provokes social media outcry

The idea was simple: ask Dubliners to hang warm coats on the Ha’penny footbridge for the city’s burgeoning homeless population.

Shortly after #warmforwinter notices appeared on lampposts near the popular landmark last week, an array of anoraks, parkas and fleeces started to line the railings.

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To drive out the tax avoiders, the EU must reimburse states that depend on them

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An initiative against tax havens has been voted down by states who cannot afford to lose the revenue such status brings

For the time being, the European commission has lost its battle with the EU’s tax havens for greater visibility on how much tax multinational companies pay and where they pay it.

A proposed rule would have forced multinationals to reveal the revenues and profits they make, and how little corporate tax they pay, in each of the 28 member states.

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