Last Refuge Archives

Last Refuge

THE NEXT GOVERNMENT

May 29, 2019

NOW FOR the real election. Both Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil (along with desperate pleas from Labour leader Brendan Howlin) posit the prospects... Read more »

CASEY STILL BENT ON DÁIL

May 16, 2019

RIVALS OF Sinn Féin MEP Matt Carthy have harped on his intention to run for a Cavan-Monaghan seat in the Dáil, regardless of... Read more »

FG’S TEENAGE PROHIBITION

May 16, 2019

FINE GAEL senator Catherine Noone had to back-pedal rapidly last week following her demand that the legal age limit for alcohol be raised... Read more »

POSTER GIRL ANNE RABBITTE

May 16, 2019

FIANNA FÁIL’S Midlands North West (MNW) EU candidate, Anne Rabbitte TD, continues to blunder in her election campaign, with the most recent boo-boo... Read more »

ELECTRIFYING DEIRDRE CLUNE MEP

May 16, 2019

ANOTHER MANUFACTURED row – similar to the spat between amazons Mairead McGuinness and Maria ‘Rose’ Walsh – broke out last week in the... Read more »

VARADKAR’S LEGAL PRECEDENT

May 2, 2019

WHAT AN interesting sequence of events has taken place since the New Year surrounding Shane Ross’s judicial appointments bill. Fine Gael and, in... Read more »

RABBITTE’S TUAM BABIES BLUNDER

May 2, 2019

FIANNA FÁIL has landed itself in la merde over the Tuam babies with a most disingenuous statement from TD Anne Rabbitte, expressing concern... Read more »

Janice Boylan Irish Military Mali Coolock Says No IFP Hermann Kelly Timmy Dooley Aontú Mal O’Hara Fintan O’Toole Josepha Madigan Eoghan Harris Ukraine War Micheál Martin Middle East Philip Ryan Seán Clancy Simon Coveney Hugo MacNeill Mountbatten Neasa Hourigan Green Party Martin NPT Ivana Bacik Independents Limerick Hospital Overcrowding Barry Cowen

AK47 LIMBERS UP

May 2, 2019

ELECTORAL CATASTROPHE could be facing the Labour Party in the local elections if two recent polls are anything to go by. Labour had... Read more »

FG PEMBROKE BLUE BLOODS

May 2, 2019

WHAT A stellar trio of candidates Fine Gael has assembled in the local election barony of Pembroke – formerly Pembroke-South Dock – which... Read more »

21/07/2014 Aidan Eames of Eames Solicitors, reading a statement from Angela Kearns to the media outside the Four Courts yesterday(Mon) after a High Court hearing.Pic: Collins Courts

AIDAN EAMES’S CLIENTS

April 18, 2019

THE MOST influential man in the room at the recent Oireachtas Committee on Sport hearing was not Football Association of Ireland (FAI) demoted... Read more »

RABBITTE FEELS UNLOVED

April 18, 2019
FIANNA FÁIL’S two-candidate strategy in the Midlands-North-West (MNW) EU constituency – the, er, ‘dream ticket’ of Brendan Smith and Anne Rabbitte – is already... Read more »

McDOWELL’S FREE MEDIA PLATFORMS

April 18, 2019

DUBLIN BAY South TDs Jim O’Callaghan and Kate O’Connell must have been chewing their carpets at the flattering exposure granted to former minister... Read more »

GEMMA’S THEORIES

April 18, 2019

ADDING PUNGENCY to the EU elections is the candidacy of ‘investigative journalist’ Gemma O’Doherty in Dublin. If there is one live debate that... Read more »

HIGGINS’S LABOUR DEFECTORS

April 18, 2019

PRESIDENT HIGGINS’S new appointments to the Council of State do not include any party political members – not even from Labour, the political... Read more »

GOODBYE MUIRSHEEN DURKAN?

April 4, 2019
FINE GAEL’S supposed coup in recruiting former SDLP leader, Mark ‘Muirsheen’ Durkan, as their Dublin Euro candidate looks like bombing, despite Leo Varadkar’s initial... Read more »

KEEPING UP WITH NOEL ROCK

April 4, 2019

IT’S NOT often that a backbench TD makes three of his own party’s government ministers, including the Taoiseach, look foolish and out of... Read more »

LEFT, LEFT AND LEFT AGAIN

April 4, 2019

THREE OF the four Dublin EU seats are predictable with Fine Gael’s Frances Fitzgerald, Fianna Fail’s Barry Andrews and Sinn Féin’s Lynn Boylan... Read more »

RUN RABBITTE RUN FOR DÁIL AND EU

April 4, 2019
RUNNING TWO candidates in the Midlands-North-West (MNW) European constituency in 2014 split the Fianna Fail vote (between Pat ‘The Cope’ Gallagher and Thomas Byrne),... Read more »

DALY AND WALLACE FOR EUROPE?

March 21, 2019
THE FOURTH seat in the Dublin Euro constituency is seen as hard to call, with the first three going to Frances Fitzgerald (Fine Gael),... Read more »

RUTH COPPINGER’S BORDER LINE

March 21, 2019

THE CURIOUS fascination of the ‘bourgeois media’ with the attacks on TD Paul Murphy’s Socialist Party (SP) from its comrades on the Committee... Read more »

PASCHAL, SIMON AND VLAD

March 21, 2019

SOMEBODY IS stirring it for Simon Coveney, with the Sunday Times followed by the Irish Times both suggesting that Paschal Donohoe is now... Read more »

MARTIN LET DURKAN SLIP TO FG – TWICE

March 21, 2019
FINE GAEL’S acquisition of former SDLP leader Mark Durkan to its Euro election ticket in Dublin has been characterised as a brilliant coup by... Read more »

JIM O’CALLAGHAN UNDER THREAT

March 7, 2019

THERE WAS a time when Fianna Fáil’s justice spokesperson, Jim O’Callaghan, was Micheál Martin’s right-hand man in the parliamentary party and a member... Read more »

EXPELLING VICTOR ORBÁN

March 7, 2019

FINE GAEL’S four MEPs are keeping their heads down as a serious split breaks out over the proposed expulsion from the European People’s... Read more »

TROT SEATS AT RISK

March 7, 2019

THE Sunday Business Post’s story last weekend about the Socialist Party’s international and internecine factionalism is surprising, but nevertheless indicates a malaise in... Read more »

WHO FEARS TO SPEAK OF UNITED IRELAND?

March 7, 2019

FIANNA FÁIL senator Mark Daly stuck it to the government in a Sunday Independent interview last weekend over its lamentable failure to prepare... Read more »

SINN FÉIN GOES BACK TO BASICS

February 21, 2019

SINN FÉIN is still struggling in the polls following its disastrous presidential campaign and appears to have reverted to harder, more Republican and... Read more »

FRANK O’ROURKE TD: SIMPLY THE BEST

February 21, 2019

“IF A cow calved in Ardclough, Frank would claim to be its father” is how Kildare Independent councillor Bernard Caldwell described Kildare North... Read more »

MICHEÁL MARTIN’S STRATEGY

February 21, 2019

SIGNS OF establishment anxiety about the government’s durability were visible last weekend and they were not eased with a poll that showed Fine... Read more »

FINE GAEL FLEES FROM HEALY-RAES

February 21, 2019

DANNY HEALY-RAE’S clownish antics on climate change and sundry issues are beginning to wear thin, even amongst the family’s large fan base in... Read more »

GRAND COALITION LOOMING

February 7, 2019

ENDA KENNY was not so bad after all, is the growing sentiment among certain frontbench Fianna Fáil members who are wistfully recalling his... Read more »

IAN PAISLEY’S FIRST CLASS TICKETS

February 7, 2019
THE DUP’S Ian Paisley does not appear to be grateful for the first-class travel and accommodation enabling him to speak at Co-operation Ireland’s New... Read more »

BITCHIN’ BARRY BLAMELESS

February 7, 2019
LIBERAL BIGOTS and left-wing zealots have been routed by the Fine Gael national executive and former head of Young Fine Gael, Barry Walsh, with... Read more »

VLAD PLOTS COVENEY’S EXILE

February 7, 2019

INTENSE SPECULATION about Phil Hogan being a shoe-in for reappointment to the EU Commission has been largely stimulated by Big Phil himself. But... Read more »

KINGSTOWN LADIES AT RISK

January 24, 2019

MARY HANAFIN’S unquenchable ambition has not been dulled by her 30 years in politics, some of it in cabinet. She intends running for... Read more »

MICHEÁL MARTIN’S THREE AMIGOS

January 24, 2019

THE SPECTACLE of three senior Fianna Fáil frontbenchers scrambling for places on the European election ticket in the South constituency says a lot... Read more »