Opinions differ wildly on last week’s election. Here Ray Bassett offers his take.
Author: Ray Bassett
The President of Ireland, Michael D Higgins, dissolved the Dáil, on 8th November and a general election will take place in the Republic on the 29th of this month. The two main coalition parties in Government, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, go into this electoral contestnervous but expectant of a good result on the basis of recent favourable opinion polls. Nervous because there is little enthusiasm for the present administration but hopeful because of the travails of […]
The media in the Irish Republic have been strangely convulsed lately by the events around the resignation of a Sinn Féin backbench T.D., Brian Stanley. The national broadcaster, RTE,has majored heavily on the story and the “paper of record”, the Irish Times, (always anxious to put the boot into Sinn Féin), has devoted its leading headlines to it. On the face of it, it is hard to fathom why Stanley’s resignation should elicit such […]
It is increasingly clear that for Britain to achieve a real Brexit in any meaningful way, the unresolved dilemma of how to manage arrangements on the island of Ireland, must be tackled. While the partition of Ireland into two small States greatly inhibited the development of true independence of the new Irish Free State, the […]
Sinn Féin’s new policy document “International Protection, A fair system that works” is a substantial contribution to the national debate in Ireland on the issue of political asylum and protection of refugees. It was drawn up in response to the widespread perception that the party’s steep decline in the polls was due to getting out […]
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Sinn Féin, where now for the Party?
The Local and European elections in the Republic have proved an unwelcome shock for Sinn Féin. The outcome was not expected. Although the party’s high position in opinion polls was slipping, it could never have expected such a shattering result. It achieved only just under 12% of the popular vote in the Local contests. Not […]
It takes something major to change the atmosphere in a country, once famous for its céad míle fáilte hospitality to one where there is widespread hostility to the arrival of some migrants. This has happened in Ireland where nobody doubts but that immigration is now in the words of former Taoiseach Leo Varadkar “a top-tier” […]
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An Irish lesson for Gaza?
Ray Bassett is a former Irish diplomat. He was intimately involved in preparing the groundwork for negotiations that led to the Good Friday Agreement. Never be afraid to engage, peace is made with your enemies, not your friends. In early 1993, and against the continued conflict in Northern Ireland, a series of clandestine meetings took […]
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Reflections on Good Friday 1998
Ray Bassett is a former Irish diplomat and was intimately involved in preparing the groundwork for the negotiations and the GFA itself. He reflects on those momentous events of 25 years ago. In a sometimes poignant piece he recalls those who made history but our no longer with us and dismisses claims that the GFA […]
The recent opinion poll by the BBC indicated that a majority of people, north and south of the Irish border, believe that a reunited Ireland is the probable outcome of future political developments. If that is accurate, then there is an onus on all to ensure that this takes place as smoothly as possible. There […]