Sign in. It’s quick, free and it’s up to you.
An account is an optional way to support the work we do. Find out more.
THE NEWER AND larger Fianna Fáil parliamentary party gathered for the first time in Leinster House today amid a buoyant mood following its election success.
Micheál Martin’s party secured an unexpected 44 seats in last Friday’s general election. Many of the newly-elected TDs were in Leinster House for the first-time today, as well as old faces who’ve won back seats they lost in 2011.
The parliamentary party met for just under 90 minutes in Leinster House with the mood described as “exhilarating” by one TD who said there was a sense that Fianna Fáil is “very much back in business”.
Sources said afterwards there was no substantial discussion around the issue of coalition talks with Fine Gael or any other party.
While some TDs believe there is a realistic prospect of Fianna Fáil being part of or even leading the next government – despite being the smaller party – others believe it will be in opposition.
“It’ll be a Fine Gael minority. There’ll be lots of talk, but we’re not going into government,” one senior Fianna Fáil said afterwards, predicting there will be another election in 18 months.
One TD said it would be a “long game” when it came to any government negotiations. Earlier the newly-elected Marc MacSharry told RTÉ’s News at One repeatedly that there are no negotiations underway with other parties.
Today’s meeting focussed on securing support for the election of Micheál Martin as Taoiseach when the 32nd Dáil meets for the first time next Thursday.
The party’s position on water charges was clarified with Fianna Fáil making clear it expects people to continue paying their bills as it is the law on the land, despite the party’s position that charges should be abolished.
“People have to pay their charges. If they’ve bills, they must be honoured,” one TD said after the meeting.
Fianna Fáil has committed to abolishing Irish Water and suspending water charges for five years if in government.
Reports that the party would examine a future tax credit for the households who have already paid their bills have been dismissed and Fianna Fáil is not proposing to refund those who’ve already paid charges.
The whole water charges issue is likely to be key in any discussions with Fine Gael in the coming weeks.
Fianna Fáil also agreed to pick one nominee for the position of Ceann Comhairle with four TDs having made their interest known.
TDs Micheal Moynihan, Brendan Smith, Seán Ó Fearghaíl and Pat ‘The Cope’ Gallagher will all seek to be the party’s nominee for the position of Dáil chair.
A vote of the parliamentary party will select the nominee and this will be held when Fianna Fáil meets again on Monday at 3pm.
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
Facebook should be broken up
@Peter Laurent: into what? If they were split into multiple social media platforms then one of the platforms would emerge as the dominant player anyway because the whole point is to be connected with people which is a bit difficult if you have a quarter of the people you know on one each of four separate platforms. It’s probably a natural monopoly, which is fine as long it is recognised as such and regulated accordingly. But they barely seem to be regulated at all at present which is a problem.
@winston smith: i think you maybe miss the point…with respect….there is basically a duopoly of facebook and google that take in as much as 75% of all digital ad revenues around the world , this is making them beyond giants in each market , both of them have gobbled up any major evolving platform , instagram , whatsapp , youtube etc and dominance in digital currency etc etc on the way – there is a need for sensible regulation – monopolistic behaviour is not healthy in free markets – traditionally were broken up in the us for good reason as anti-trust – they themselves know that there needs to be a sensible regulated market but of course will suck up as much cash as possible while they can – saying that a social giant will always emerge as being the biggest cos thats the point ignores that they dont have the same company that owns instagram , the same company that owns messaging , or the in google case the same company owns search and then also gets to own / dominate in video ( paid a billion for youtube ) – and then theres there is the whole issue of having stiff regulations for mainstream media – but giving a free pass to social media and allow them claim they are not really media companies – there are a ton of things required to try regulate these mega industries properly. The US is already on that track about breaking up for a reason – we of course will be petrified that the big employers in dublin might be damaged and will likely spin it like hell that regulating tech giants is somehow a bad thing. welcome to ireland.
@Dave Hammond: fair enough on the YouTube and whatsapp and similar subsidiaries, but I wouldn’t agree that all monopolies should be broken up. Some industries have natural monopolies, and id say social media like the main Facebook site is such a monopoly. Breaking up these sort of monopolies usually ends up bad for consumers (think the EU deciding that a country the size of Ireland needed competition in electricity supply, or that sky shouldn’t be allowed monopolise premier league coverage: both resulted in higher costs to consumers). Natural monopolies should be treated almost as though they are public utilities because they can’t be allowed completely dictate price if there’s no competition to correct to market price. Agree re the media bit, facebook should be treated as publishers.
@winston smith: agree , when they talk about breaking up – they essentially are talking about instagram , youtube , whatsapp etc etc – the legitimate concern is that they essentially become too big and difficult to regulate at all. Your point about monopoly is still misguided imo , anti-trust legislation was designed to encourage competition – any market where monopoly emerges needs to be regulated and some controls are required – it is a fallacy that breaking up monopolies is bad for consumers – you must have very short memory of you think that an aer lingus monopoly charging 500 quid to get to london or Telecom Eireann taking a year to install a phione in the house is somehow better than having regulated competitive markets instead.
@Dave Hammond: aerlingus wasn’t a natural monopoly though. A natural monopoly is where an industry will inevitably become a monopoly if left to its own devices. Those industries certainly need to be regulated but forcing competition into the industry causes increased costs to consumers as high infrastructural costs or other barriers to entry being borne by multiple players reduces economies of scale. The below link is an explanation about these sort of industries, they’re quite common in countries like Ireland, and our power supply was a naturally monopolistic industry until regulators intervened and forced competition.
@winston smith: thanks winston but I have my MBA a good few years now and understand the economics of monopoly – everything I outlined in my comments still stands. thanks.
Who gets that money I wonder.
@Greg Ward: Those fat cat politicians in their huge mansions!!!!!
@Tweety McTweeter: oh yeh all those greedy politicians get the fines transferred into their own accounts What kind of g0bshoites are on this site
@Ben: loads
@Ben:
Or are they party political activists?
Allegedly the Irish government are considering legal action against US Regulators to stop the $5 billion Facebook fine…
This may be perceived as toxic 4.2/10
@Robin Basstard: ahh yes the journal toxic software algorithms are legendarily shoite
@Robin Basstard:
Link?
To comment here please log on with your Facebook or Twitter acc given me a break ffs..
Any chance the Irish authorities might fine Facebook for interference in Irish referendums?
It’s ironic considering there were double the number of unregulated Pro Abortions ads over the course of the referendum, they blatantly suppressed one side in favour of another, this should be a real cause for concern.
https://www.siliconrepublic.com/enterprise/referendum-ireland-advertising
Any chance the Irish media might report on these scandalous issues? Not a chance, they are just as complicit, they know about this and stories like this but are not publishing.
@eric nelligan: The Pro-Life ads were banned because they were filled with deliberate misinformation and lies, it’s well known that social media platforms are cracking down on Fake News and propaganda so no surprise those dishonest ads were banned.
@Graham Wilson: it was a bad strategy in any case. The misinformation and lies just caused the voter to deeply distrust any information coming from that side.
@Sean: Very true.
Fakebook days are numbered
@Johnny Conway: $16.9 billion profits in Q4 2018 along with growing daily and monthly active users, people have been using that tired line for the last 10 years.
@Graham Wilson: he means Facebooks days are numbered because hey will be forcefully broken up not because users will leave.
@J: Will you start an event on Bookface, or will I?
Only one way to stop social media control of data and that’s stop using them. Fines are futile unless it’s a enough to damage the cash flow of the company.
Make them irrelevant by not using them.
@Thefallguy: that or even better, break it up
$5bn sounds like a lot but this company has grown by over $200bn so far this year alone. A large part of that is due to how ruthless they are with people’s data and privacy. Zuckerberg is probably crying himself laughing at this number.
“Facebook’s stock value increased 1.8% after the fine was announced, closing at nearly $205, the highest it has been all year.”
Imagine you got a fine for something and then found out your overall wealth increased by way more as a result
@RogerRamjet: that’s not uncommon actually. If a company is under investigation and the market presumes that they’ll be fined then the amount of the fine will be estimated and priced into the stock price. If the fine turns out to be less than the market had estimated then you will see a bounce in the stock price. The negative impact on the stock price would have occurred when the investigation was announced, now that it’s concluded there is a slight recovery of the negative impact that occurred previously.
Fook fakebook
This may be perceived as toxic 2.0
Said that ages ago and was laughed at as a tin foil hat…..my mate in uk posted couple years ago him and his wife were talking about goin on a Caribbean cruise the following year, he got up next morning with cruises adverts on Facebook both their phones were on table as they were talking, happened to me few months ago…
@Dougal67: is that you Jim Corr
That’s like a small tiny car dent to Facebook. It’d be better if they shut down and dissolved the entire company, it’s a disgusting corporation which people need to realise and get off.
@Dan Skelton: people’s choice vs your choice … I do not think that is going to happen for awhile
The method through the millenniums … divide and conquer.
while we are about it, let’s break up EU, USA, Russia, China, as they all have too many members too.
have your say