So how are the campaigns faring?

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.

Anger with the Fianna Fáil-Green government is still red hot but now there’s a sense that people just want to get the voting over and done with.

If there was a sense of political momentum among ordinary people before the election, a lot of it has petered away as they are forced to watch three weeks of catch-all promises that they themselves view as impossible to implement in the current economic crisis.