Continuing my look through the motions ahead of Young Fine Gael National Conference in Tullamore the next motion to pique my interest is one from my own branch in UCC. The motion reads as follows: YFG believes that a graduate tax should be introduced for all college graduates as a means of funding their education and the present entry fees should be phased out over 5 years. Households with an income of below €45,000 would be exempted One the issues I always...
Young Fine Gael is holding its National Conference in Tullamore, Co. Offaly between the 17th-19th February. One of the motions that has been accepted for debate is on Fracking or to be more exact Hydraulic fracturing which is way to extract Gas from shale. The motion from UCD YFG reads as follows YFG approves of the process of fracking as can it can prove a viable energy source in Ireland for the foreseeable future Clare County Council recently banned the process while in Leitrim and...
The Campaign for Children will be holding a public meeting tomorrow, Wednesday 25th, at 6pm in the Geogrpahy Lecture Hall in UCC. It is part of a series of public meetings to inform people about the work of the campaign. The Campaign is chaired by Former Supreme Court Justice Catherine McGuinness. Its board also contains some influential people, including Fergus Finlay of Barnardos and Olivia O’Leary. The Campaign raises very important issues and more importantly has suggestions to how they should be solved....
Image via Wikipedia For Part 1 see here Minister for Finance Michael Noonan TD today announced the rest of Budget 2012. The main points are as follows: VAT: Raised by 2% to 23% 1.4c increase on Petrol 1.6c increase on Diesel €17.32 increase on Fuel Oil (to rise in May) €14.46 increase on Natural Gas (to rise in May) No Carbon Tax on solid fuels 25c increase on pack of 20 Cigarettes Capital Acquisitions Tax: Up from 25% to...
Today we got a look at the first part of Budget 2012 . Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform Brendan Howlin today announced a series of measures that add up to the €2.2bn in cuts. The main points that I took from today’s announcements: Government will reduce the size of the public service to 282,500 by end 2015 €250 added to the Student Registration Fee Student Support funding cut by 14% Student Maintenance Grant cut by 3% No new...
Willie Penrose TD and Minister of State at Department of Environment, Community & Local Government with responsibility for Housing & Planning has resigned from the Cabinet and from the Labour Party. Penrose was a Super Junior Minister meaning he was entitled to attend all Cabinet meetings. He has resigned over the issue of the closure of Columb Barracks in Mullingar which is within his constituency. He has issued this statement (from Politics.ie ) It was regret that I tendered my...
Tonight at midnight Mary McAleese finishes her Presidency after 14 years as President of the Republic of Ireland. While I do not remember much of her election or the campaign preceding it, I do have a memory of much of her years as President as I was 11 when she was elected and have grown a lot since! I have lots of memories of President McAleese, from her national address the day after the September 11th attacks to...
On Morning Ireland this morning Fianna Fail TD Dara Callaery suggested that the Government had a series of referendums planned for next year. The question is what will these be on? Two we know of. They are the long awaited Children’s Rights Referendum and of course a referendum to abolish Seanad Eireann. But what else can we expect? I asked for suggestions on Facebook and Twitter. There was some interesting answers. Most people wanted a Children’s Rights Referendum...
Its all over. The candidates can lie in this morning as its now the turn of the political hacks who all across the country will be turning up to the count centres across the 43 constituencies to start tallying the Presidential Election. The boxes will be opened at 9am when the votes will be sorted and tallied. Then the Votes for the presidential election will be sorted. Once sorted the votes will be counted and the result sent to Dublin. We wont have...
After thinking about all the tweets and facebooking from the Irish Presidential Candidates, I decided to ask them if they would contine use Twitter/Facebook if they were elected President of the Republic of Ireland. I asked the question on Twitter initially, but then posted it also on the candidates Facebook to give them all a fair chance of responding. These are the respons in the order I have recieved them and on what medium they responded on. Mary Davis -...
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