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EACH WEEKDAY MORNING, TheJournal.ie brings you a comprehensive guide to what’s happening in the political world.
Everyone’s talking about…
After years of pre-Budget debates being dominated about what the government was going to cut and which taxes were going to be raised, today Michael Noonan and Brendan Howlin will deliver a Budget involving a moderate increase in spending by this coalition for the first time.
Laura Hutton / Photocall Ireland
Laura Hutton / Photocall Ireland / Photocall Ireland
Expect to hear the sort of backbencher roars in the Dáil chamber that haven’t been heard since the days of Fianna Fáil as moderate tax cuts and spending increases are announced. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves of course, we still have whopping deficit, but for the first time the coalition is hoping that Budget day will be a good news day.
The opposition has other ideas, of course. When we put it to one senior Sinn Féin frontbencher last week that this will be a difficult Budget to criticise, they smiled and said: “Don’t worry, we’ll find a way.”
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The agenda…
The Fianna Fáil parliamentary party is due to meet before the Budget madness begins with much discussion on the weekend’s disappointing by-elections expected.
2.20pm: Newly-elected TDs Michael Fitzmaurice and Paul Murphy are introduced to the Dáil
2.30pm: Michael Noonan delivers the main Budget 2015 statement on taxation.
3.10pm: Brendan Howlin outlines spending in Budget 2015 after which the opposition will deliver its response.
4pm: A series of media conferences are held by various ministers outlining their department’s budget for next year. You can watch them all here.
Under pressure Arts Minister Heather Humphreys appointed her second cousin as a special advisor, according to the frontpage of the Irish Daily Mail. Lorraine Hall is also a former press advisor to Alan Shatter.
Today’s Budget will see an end to the ‘Double Irish’ tax regime with multinationals who use the tax minimisation tool to be allowed phase it out, the Irish Times reports.
The Taoiseach was asked to intervene in a bizarre dispute over a €10,000 diamond ring involving Fine Gael TD Seán Conlan, the Irish Independent reports.
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Why is the journal so quiet about Trump at the moment??
It wouldn’t be to do with that video from Georgia that’s caused this unprecedented silence, would it?
@John Mulligan: Exactly what CNN have been doing lately, did you see the veritas tapes???? https://youtu.be/ZqtZIdwhnec
haha, the media literally have been caught trying to keep all evidence of fraud from the public. The sheep are so easily led by the echo chamber they call news
@Random_paddy: Non story = Democrat media blackout.
You’ve been told by CNN its a non story and like a good little sheep you follow…
Did you not watch the links i posted, there’s clear evidence of fraud.
Im just making a point that the Journal have been very silent on this video which is clearly very incriminating. Open your eyes.
@Giddy: media outlets biased is not a shocker really though is it?
CNN favours the dems Fox favours the republicans. They don’t have neutral news anywhere especially in the states. That isn’t evidence of a rigged election though is it.
Was there isolated incidents of fraud for the Democrats? Most likely. Was there incidents of vote fraud in favour or Republicans? Just as likely.
No different than our own elections.
But neither enough to affect the election in any meaningful way.
He lost the election dude. Some things you are better off just letting go, instead of tormenting yourself over these conspiracies.
@john doe: I waited 2 days for a Trump article to post about this, Couldn’t sleep the whole time, tormented isn’t the word haha
But seriously did you watch the video?
@Giddy: yes I watched it. It may be fraud, it may be something else altogether. It’s not conclusive evidence of anything. What makes you think based on that video that if they are sneaking in ballots that they are all for Biden?
Couldn’t that just be where they had been storing some postal votes or votes from a remote polling station.
A video of people moving suitcases around hardly means a rigged election does it?
But as I said above, there is probably some level of fraud in every election. In this case lots of people have looked at it and decided that if there was some fraud it wasn’t enough to alter the result.
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