UK Foreign Secretary David Miliband provided indication today of the emerging EU strategy for dealing with the Irish No to Lisbon: it’s being left up to the Irish government to sort it out, but with a reminder of the high stakes should they choose to accept the referendum result.  Or, as Miliband colourfully put it [...]

AFOE readers interested in following the fallout from the resignation of Taoiseach (PM) Bertie Ahern and not familiar with the usual Irish sources may want to consult my post a couple of days ago for a little background (mostly in the Lisbon context) and then head to RTE, the Irish Times, and the Irish Election [...]

It’s shaping up to be an important week in Ireland for the prospects of Treaty of Lisbon ratification.   As EU-watchers know, Ireland is the only country planning to ratify the treaty by popular referendum (although events in Poland could add a referendum there too).  While the treaty should in theory have little problem passing, there’s a [...]

PARNELL came down the road,
he said to a cheering man:
“Ireland shall get her freedom
and you still break stone.”
– W.B. Yeats

It hasn’t attracted a lot of attention, but seven of the EU-15 have now thrown open their doors to the free movement of labor from the new member states (NMS).
A bit of background: when the NMS joined in 2004, the EU-15 gave themselves the right to keep the walls up for up to seven years. [...]

What to do when you haven’t finished a book but find yourself with something to say about it?
Convention dictates that one should finish a book before reviewing it (although I have my doubts about any number of published reviews), but on the other hand, The Fatal Shore, by Robert Hughes, was published 20 years ago; [...]

As people may have noted, last weekend Tobias and I were in Stockholm. One of the topics I wanted to post on but couldn’t was the latest Human Development report from the UN. There was plenty of press coverage: here, here, and here
There was even coverage in the blogs, but the tone seemed to [...]

Last Friday Eurostat released the 2004 data on comparative per capita PPP’s (purchasing power parities) across the EU. Perhaps the most surprising fact which emerges is that Ireland is now in second place (after Luzembourg) with a PPP 40% above the EU average. For a country that not so long ago was considered one of [...]

They say the Troubles are unlikely to return to Northern Ireland. They say the Irish Republican Army doesn?t have the option of returning to war. The IRA has the guns, the IRA has the men, the IRA has the capacity ? but they Just Won?t Do It.
In a post-Sept. 11 world, so the thinking [...]

Not quite kissing and making up, but Irish PM Bertie Ahern and DUP leader Iain Paisley had a ‘constructive and businesslike’ meeting in London on Thursday - the first meeting between the two for five years.