Yesterday, a revolution happened in Irish public transport. For the first time ever, someone did something that was both innovative, and in customers’ interests, rather than simply in the interests of employees or management.
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‘Fine Gael: A Family at War’ is a documentary about Fine Gael. Fine Gael is the second-biggest political party in Ireland and was responsible for founding the Irish Free State in 1922. It is traditionally a conservative party, but embraced social democratic ideals in the 1980’s. Unfortunately the party has been in free-fall in the polls since about 1987, when its popular leader, Garret Fitzgerald left coalition, resulting in a snap election in which Fine Gael lost very badly.

The underlying question in the documentary is: ‘What went wrong?’. Why was Fine Gael never returned to government as an alternative to Fianna Fail, the dominant party in Irish politics.
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The Daily Dublin Evening, formerly known as the Dublin Daily died last week. A lot of people didn’t like the paper, and they like to think that that’s the reason it didn’t matter enough and didn’t succeed. But there’s a lot more to it than that. It throws up some serious issues about what a newspaper needs to succeed.

It also prompts the question ‘what next for media in Dublin and Ireland?’
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I am just reading the comments of Phil Nolan, Eircom’s CEO to an Oireachtas (Parliament) subcommittee. Eircom is Ireland’s incumbent telco, and charges a ludicrous amount for its basic ADSL service. According to Nolan, the lack of uptake has nothing to do with the price – it’s just that the benefits haven’t been made apparent to the public, and that’s the government’s fault, of course -.
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