My order of preference, for the leadership of Fianna Fail, was as follows. First choice, Eamon O Cuiv, a man of integrity who comes from a tradition within Fianna Fail that has been largely lost. It is one that needs restoring and I believe that O Cuiv would have done, and would have handled the necessary authority unflinchingly. This would have been worthy of the political line that runs from Eamon de Valera, through Lemass to Jack Lynch.

It stopped there, mainly because of Charles Haughey, and in due course because neither Albert Reynolds nor Bertie Ahern had the strength to reform Fianna Fail. Brian Cowen never had the chance, struggling as he was with an economic storm, a struggle that in the end defeated him because there were no true guidelines left for negotiating our way. O Cuiv might have been wrecked by the party, but my instinct is that he would have prevailed. Read More...

Brian Cowen has lost the confidence of the Fianna Fail party and its organisation throughout the country. This completes the circle of disapproval, making it clear that he has lost the confidence of the country. Other political parties have long since lost confidence in him.

In these circumstances, he should be sent to the Park to ask the President to accept his resignation, dissolve the Dail and call an immediate general election. On his resignation, the other members of the Government, according to Article 28.11.1 will be deemed also to have resigned their office and from then on will continue to carry on their duties only until successors have been appointed. Read More...

Brian Cowen is a master of contempt. In the last 24 hours he has completed the circle of that contempt to include the whole compass of political life in this country, leaving behind him a trail of chaos and constitutional debris.

His form of contempt is blunt, gross and brutal. He claims, quite wrongly, that he and his party are on the right track and will implement recovery and progress. Not under him will they do this. They are too contemptuous of the way it should be done. Read More...

By keeping his cabinet position as Foreign Minister, Micheal Martin delivers an unspoken but plain message that he anticipates defeat. A true leader would have gone into the wilderness first and then challenged the man he sought to replace. Martin's behaviour is at best eccentric, at worst defeatist.

To me, as to many others, this is a relief. Of the three publicly identified contenders, Martin is by far the worst. He lacks Mary Hanafin's sharpness and clear focus, her reasonably broad-minded grasp of political issues and her preparedness to debate them. Martin also lacks Brian Lenihan's undoubted and ameliorative appeal. Lenihan may talk nonsense but by God he makes it sound good! Read More...

Brian Cowen’s troubles are deepening by the hour. The consultation process is little more than theatre. his survival is on a thread as more and more of the true facts emerge. The greatest step forward in this process of slow revelation of the truth is contained in yesterday’s Daily Mail, to which I will shortly turn my attention. First, however, there is Cowen’s own statements about himself.

He concealed more than he conceded in his lengthy statements to the Dail on Thursday. He failed to answer crucial questions. He concealed details of significant conversations about Anglo-Irish Bank held with senior bank staff, board members and other politicians. He denied exchanges that have been clearly claimed by others. He has since continued to prevaricate and misrepresent the truth. He is wrong to refer to Michael Somers as having ‘discredited’ the Drumm claim over the NTMA. Michael Somers, like the Taoiseach himself, is only capable of denying. This is what Brian Cowen has been doing, with little respect for the truth, over the events of the last three years in respect of the banks, and notably Anglo-Irish Bank. Read More...

INTRODUCTION to “Shabby episode an example of all that's wrong in sorry State”:

I was approached on David Drumm’s behalf by an intermediary in the autumn of last year. David Drumm was frustrated by the way the media were portraying him simply as the villain who had wrecked Anglo-Irish Bank.

Making scapegoats to bear the blame for Ireland spiralling down into huge debt has been Cowen’s Government’s response to its own mismanagement of public affairs. It has not otherwise been directed at bankers, who are central to the economic collapse. It has led to a vindictive pursuit of developers who themselves have been the victims of slack management. And it has left ordinary Irish men and women with a massive clear-up operation and a load of debt. Read More...

Brian Cowen's troubles are deepening by the hour. The consultation process is little more than theatre. His survival is on a thread as more and more of the facts emerge. The greatest step forward in this process of slow revelation of the truth I will shortly examine. First, however, there is Mr Cowen's statements about himself.

He concealed more than he conceded in his lengthy statements to the Dail on Thursday. He failed to answer crucial questions. He concealed details of significant conversations about Anglo Irish Bank held with senior bank staff, board members and other politicians. He denied exchanges that have been clearly claimed by others. He has since continued to prevaricate. This is what mr Cowen has been doing, with little respect for the truth, over the last three years in respect of the banks, and notably, Anglo Irish Bank. Read More...

NAMA is in deeper trouble than before Christmas and its troubles will get deeper still. Once it was a flagship solution to get us out of the development collapse. Now, it has become a growing nightmare, ill-conceived and its legal basis increasingly questionable.

Much of this still remains secret -- itself always a bad sign -- as is the blame-laden approach adopted by the organisation and its chief operator, Frank Daly, which was demonstrated in the profoundly biased 'Prime Time' programme shown at the end of last year.

A large part of the problem derives from the increasing chaos that now surrounds NAMA's operations, making it -- despite the vast sums involved in the debts that it is taking over -- a rapidly declining asset-stripper and profit-maker when compared with the losses in the banks which were responsible for the setting up of NAMA in the first place. Read More...

At the outset of the New Year, just when one seeks to put positive thoughts and aspirations forward and give people hope, along comes the departing Bertie Ahern to mar the process by reminding us of what a mess he made of things.

Widely acknowledged as his great achievement, the Northern Ireland Peace Process was his surrender of the reunification of Ireland held dear by his party for the last 80 years. The real winner was Ian Paisley, who held us all to ransom until he got a deal -- peace and power-sharing -- that suited him. This included permanently separating Northern Ireland from the Republic. Bertie Ahern and Tony Blair had no choice but to welcome this. Read More...