Pat Leahy

Everyone - within Government and without - is preparing for a November election

Haughey understood the ambiguity many felt about the Northern conflict. FitzGerald understood the yearning of middle class urbanites to be modern, European, more secular. The leaders who will prosper now are those who intuit where the country really is in 2024

The Fine Gael feel-good factor isn’t going to last forever. Throw in the expectation in Government of a Trump victory on November 5th and the possibility of a “flight to safety” by Irish voters afterwards, and one date starts to look most likely

Between the once-off measures that occur every year and the rule that must be broken, the Department of Finance is like something from Flann O’Brien

Eleven FG TDs have said they will not run in next election, and the party faces a headache finding electable new candidates

Make no mistake: A far-right government in France would be an earthquake for the EU

Even those who don’t like the departing Green Party leader take him seriously

If the two parties don’t commit to a pact before the general election, voters may reasonably conclude they are not really serious about being in government and having their policies implemented

Nastier lead-in, more focus on migration and less on green issues, and Sinn Féin’s need to get back to basics

The message from the two budget boyos is that with inflation under control there is little justification for another glut of one-off giveaways

The new mayor of Limerick will have a job unlike any other in Ireland, with potential to strengthen local government and local democracy

The local and European elections are not a crystal ball. But they are a huge political event, which will both tell us things about the state of Irish politics

What exactly will it be illegal to say in future that it is not currently illegal to say? Nobody seems to know

There needs to be a second half of the plan beyond telling the continuing arrivals that they’re on their own. All this just plays to the “Ireland is full” gang

Too many on the left are content to whine from the sidelines, wary of the responsibility of power and unwilling to make the compromises that forming a Government require

Already there are four key signs about where his priorities will lie - and they don’t include scrapping with the Opposition

The united Ireland conversation involves listening to people who don’t agree with you and whose advice you don’t want to hear

It’s like no other job in the country. If you think anyone can do it, you have no idea what’s involved

We were all waiting, says one Government insider, like waiting for a kettle to boil, when it wasn’t plugged in

Relations across the cultural chasm in the Coalition have been deteriorating for months, with Fine Gael and Fianna Fail ministers increasingly given to mutterings about their Green colleagues

In fairness to us, we really have some neck. There is literally no end to our chutzpah

Two sets of political considerations will influence the decision: tactical and practical.

Meetings have frequently been farcical. It’s ridiculous that two committees should jostle for attention

Recent polls are promising but the party has big decisions to make on three key questions

Don't always take the advice of officials' and don't play into your opponents' hands - here's what the Taoiseach can learn from his predecessor

There has always been a suspicion that Sinn Féin has never really wanted Northern Ireland to work, but there’s more to it than that

He might not like to talk about “coalitionology” but the decisions he makes will have far reaching implications

Housing will still be on voters’ minds. But the local opposition to putting asylum seeker or refugee centres in some places is an electoral tinderbox

Strap in for a busy year. It is certain that there will be two national elections, the locals and Euros, this year. Expect speculation about a general election to start early and continue unabated until it actually happens

Our political editor on the reasons to draw solace from a turbulent year in politics

It’s time to stress its benefits, to stand up and defend migration. But it’s also the time to acknowledge that our migration policies must be sustainable

Can the Greens convince people they have delivered? How will Fine Gael persuade voters to give it a fourth term? And what’s the temperature around a Fianna Fáil/Sinn Féin coalition?

The stability message is unlikely to wash with 20-somethings stuck living at home

With his far-fetched pretensions, blood and soil rhetoric and stash of gold, Barrett is more than a little ridiculous

It’s not that the Government must do better so much as they need to get off their backsides

The North is learning to manage its sectarian demons. But getting Stormont back will be more difficult

Budget negotiations will be fairly brutal. There will be one-off sweeteners, but no big increases in spending

Pat Leahy: There is a world of serious events happening every day. We may have lost perspective on crisis rocking State broadcaster

More than 1.21 million permanent private households have a very direct economic interest in house prices not falling. That’s a lot of silent resistance

If Varadkar’s coalition partners conclude that he intends using his position as Taoiseach to advance Fine Gael’s political interests at their expense, then things will get very rocky indeed for the Coalition over its final 18 months