Ireland in ferment while government is forced to call by elections

As the largest student demo in decades snaked its way through Dublin, calling for the scrapping of the doublin of fees and some students occupied the Dept of Finance but were also attacked by police, the coalition government braces itself for another austerity budget. However, the government's fate now hangs by a thread. With a wafer thin majority, a Fianna Fail backbencher recently resigned from the Dail (the Irish parliament) stating that his heart was no longer in the government's programme and that a general election was necessary.

This is the decaying Fianna Fail and Green coalition's greatest fear and the reason why scandalously they have refused to move the writ on 4 by elections which need to be called for the Dail. One constituency, Donegal North West, has had no representative since the summer of 2009. An opposition senator took the government to court and now the High Court has ruled that the government's actions are contrary to the Irish constitution. The government's reaction was to suggest challenging the ruling in the Supreme Court. But reason prevailed and the writ has been moved for November 25th. This will mean that the new TD (MP) will take their seat before the vote on the austerity budget. The other by elections will be held early next year. We are witnessing the dying days of a discredited and morally bankrupt government, many of whose members created the crisis in the first place and who have steered Ireland down the road to bankruptcy and mass emigration while their friends, the corrupt developers and bankers who created all of this in the first place, continue to live off the fat of the land. Their days are numbered. And ironic that this is the government and the economic plan on which Osborne and his crew have modelled their cuts and growth agenda.