General Election predictions - June 2010 / May 2012 ?

[beamish2010]

I believe that the general election will take place in 2012.The ruling coalition would not
dare call an election this year or next year knowing full they well they could be wiped
out.The current FF/Green govt will more than likely slug it out till 2012.

[Tomas Mor]

I think FF want to get out now, and leave the mess to FG/Labour, then they can be back for 1916 commemoration, their reason for living. Biffo would have tgo go to be replaced by silvermint Martin,m the man who did not read his brief and cost us billions i n nursing home fees. Dermot Aher outside chance, Mary Hanafin also. Lenihan would be first choice only for his health. Is Conor still in Vietnam, imagine sending that clown out there.

[beamish2010]

I believe that the general election will take place in 2012.The ruling coalition would not
dare call an election this year or next year knowing full well they could be wiped
out.The current FF/Green govt will more than likely slug it out till 2012.

The current FF/Green govt have too much to lose by calling an election in 2010 or 2011...

[Observer]

But, if other economies start recovering, we probably will to a certain extent.

Recovery on the continent is likely to be slow - if everyone starts deflating their economies to make themselves more competitive for exports, well, where's the demand going to come from to buy those exports?

News N Economics: The endgame for Europe: wage cutting and the battle for exports

Tourism will increase.

It's not going to turn around things by itself. We still have a vast oversupply of accommodation, with the likelihood that Nama will end up distorting the market.

There may also be slight increases in the number of businesses setting up here.

Any business setting up here, unless it's planning to be entirely export-driven or aimed towards luxury goods, is going to have to deal with the fact that a lot of people's disposable incomes are going to fall drastically over the next couple of years. There will be property and water charges which will bear proportionally more heavily on those on average incomes, it's likely that more low- and average earners will be brought into the tax net, along with a "social solidarity" tax on all income (including pensions), while Ibec are calling this week for wage cuts in both the private and public sectors. On top of that throw in rises in mortgage rates. The pain hasn't hit in earnest yet.

Will the U.S. Become the Next Ireland? - Economix Blog - NYTimes.com

Unemployment will undoubtedly come down, and FF will take the credit.

Unemployment will come down (at least as an absolute number) because people will depart to places where the prospects are less awful than here. The year-long exodus to Australia will continue:

The Tightrope: More Patricks

If the British economy starts to recover then we may see a sizeable exodus of the natives. The recent immigrants are more likely to head for the continent.

Certainly immigration seems to have dried up - on Wednesday I was driving along the N55 near Cavan town when I saw a Lithuanian registered car in front of me and it just struck me as to how long it had been since I'd last seen one - they'd been ubiquitous down here for the last decade. (Yes, I know that there are plenty of European immigrants still here driving Irish-registered cars, but the tap has been turned off.)

I have a suspicion that when the census results are released next October we could be in for a surprise as to how many people have gone.

And nobody will bother to ask how we got to where we were anyway.

I don't think people will forget this anytime soon. It took Fine Gael 16 years to make it back into government after the 1932 election, and even then they've never managed more than four years at a time in the last eighty-odd years. We may well be looking at another 1932.