There is no doubt about it — it was an omnishambles.

Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin has said he is "amused" at mounting General Election speculation.

POLITICS can be a sad business, and I don’t just mean for the electorate. There was a palpable air of sadness in Iveagh House last Monday as Eamon Gilmore announced that he was going to stand down as leader of the Labour Party.

Finance Minister Michael Noonan has refused to say if he will defuse what he called a "tax time bomb" primed to hit the elderly and sick with USC hikes.

Taoiseach Enda Kenny expects taoisigh will appear before the long-awaited Oireachtas banking inquiry, which is expected to begin hearings in advance of next year’s European and local elections.

As he looked out on the snow at Brussels airport after a crisis meeting in Nov 2010, then finance minister Brian Lenihan sat alone and concluded: “Hell is at the gates.”

Joan Burton, the social protection minister, has rejected calls for the restoration of Christmas bonus payments for welfare recipients saying it was not possible as the Government needed to keep control of spending.

As a General Election draws closer we are beginning to hear FF and ex-FF TDs sounding like hungry coyotes howling in the bright moon.

What are you doing? What the hell are you doing?

It’s a dangerous endeavour to comment on a budget the morning after it was presented high on pageant but low on detail.

DOG years are the best measure in government for counting the budgetary cycle. In human years this Government is not yet at the mid-life cycle. But come budget day on October 15 its third budget will be done and dusted.

A cut to weekly pensions in the upcoming budget has been firmly ruled out by Taoiseach Enda Kenny.

In 2009, the then Fianna Fáil/Green government denied any state involvement in sending women to the Magdalene institutions, but yesterday’s report found that assertion false.

Kicking the can down the road sounds like an amusing solution to Ireland’s problems, but the reality is no joke.

It is time to introduce lobbying regulation in Ireland, writes Gary Murphy

Micheal Noonan, the finance minister, has given the strongest signal yet that a deal with the ECB on massive Anglo debts may be in sight.

IRELAND’S bid to get a better deal on its bank bailout debts will be raised with the EU/IMF/ECB troika that rules on Irish financial policy.

The political infighting and policy inertia that have dominated the country’s waste policy have resulted in taxpayers being left with a multimillion-euro bill, writes Claire O’Sullivan

TOMORROW, the Green Party celebrates. At a gathering in the Central Hotel in Dublin, members will raise a glass to 30-years-a-growing.

Thousands of construction workers may miss out on European money for retraining because of mistakes by the previous Government, it has emerged.

MINISTERS will plead with the EU/ECB/IMF troika to cut the multi-billion euro interest payments looming on the Anglo bailout as the foreign financial chiefs arrive in Ireland for a 10-day inspection of the state’s books.

LOOMING cuts in the social welfare budget could be used to help fund an investment bank to boost job creation, it emerged last night.

THE tax take remained ahead of target last month as the universal social charge continued to boost Exchequer coffers.

IT was reported recently that Stephen McNamara, Ryanair head of communications, was left to do what our Munster representatives were seemingly not interested in doing, and that was to enquire about the traffic figures for Shannon and Cork from the DAA.

The Department of Education is today hitting back at reports that sweeping changes could be on the way to the education system.

AS a mother and grandmother, what I want to know, in the aftermath of the abuse reports, is that children are safe, that abused children, many now adults, are given the supports they need to heal and that abusers are brought to justice.

ONE of the most condescending putdowns I ever heard made by a lawyer about a colleague who had been appointed to the position of judge was that he “was the first to get a pay rise on the promotion”.

The Government will press ahead with cuts to the school bus transport scheme, a minister told more than 400 parents and teachers at a meeting in Listowel, Co Kerry last night.

IF austerity is working, it’s not reflected in the jobless figures.

POLITICIANS cannot resist expediency. Urgent takes precedence over important. Years of demographic analysis, a Green Paper in 2007 and the launch of the National Pension Framework in March of last year set out our looming dilemma of unfunded pension obligations. By 2050 the ratio of workers to retirees will be 1.8: 1. Currently that ratio is 5.6: 1.

IS THERE anyone else who just wants to stand up and scream “stop” at the top of their voices? Anyone else who wants to walk into a room of politicians, bankers and trade unionists and tell them enough is enough — we won’t be taken for mugs anymore?

Cabinet Ministers are to lose their garda drivers under radical changes to official Government transport announced today.

WE’RE at the end of the second week of GE11 and in the west Cork town of Skibbereen, the election campaign that everyone concedes as so important, rumbles on.

ANTI-coursing campaigners have vowed to continue their fight despite the likelihood of their only political allies being voted out of the Dáil.

Finance Minister Brian Lenihan has welcomed the Green Party's decision to support the Finance Bill, albeit from the opposition benches.

THE opposition lambasted the convulsions within Fianna Fáil and said it was clear the main Government party was focused on itself rather than running the country.

SO THIS Government dies as it has lived — to the sound of ravenous dogs feeding off what’s left of Ireland’s economic carcass.

Europe tried to bounce Ireland into an international bailout before the Cabinet could discuss it, a senior minister said last night.

BRIAN COWEN last night insisted he was not “ashamed” by the terms of the €85bn EU/IMF bailout, but refused to put the momentous deal to a Dáil vote.

FINE GAEL leader Enda Kenny has sought to make a clear distinction between the language his party and Labour are using about the EU/IMF bailout.

Finance Minister Brian Lenihan is to ask the Government to apply for a bailout loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and Europe.

HE has already caused ructions in Fine Gael after looking for money from developers on the golf course. But as Enda Kenny continues on the quest to raise party funds he has started to look in the most unlikely of places.

The Government was tonight accused of doing nothing to stem the tide of emigration as unemployment reached a 16-year high.

The Financial Regulator’s handling of the banking crisis was late and insufficient, a Government watchdog said today.

The Financial Regulator’s handling of the banking crisis was late and insufficient, a Government watchdog said today.

New figures from the Central Statistics Office today provide evidence of the downturn in Ireland's tourism trade with the number of overseas visitors down by more than 900,000 last year.

THE cabinet is working a double shift. Along with their regular weekly Tuesday meetings they sit every Thursday to deliberate on the budget. Their target is to obtain a €4bn reduction in public expenditure.

THE proposal by Ivan Yates (Opinion, June 11) for “all party agreement” in “the national interest” is, as he himself acknowledged, “utopian, naïve and undemocratic”.

The future narrative of national politics seems foreseeable. The FF/Green government will circle the wagons and limp on in a weakened state. With each unpopular measure, the clamour for change will escalate. Eventually they will buckle on some specific issue

Every forecast he and the Government have made over the past three years has been laughably wrong. The forecasts of the live register of unemployed and tax revenues have been so erroneous that ordinary people just don’t believe the Government has a proper grip on the deteriorating economic situation