If not for the politicians (who are looking hagard at best), then for the correspondents and the politicial junkie bloggers and Twitterers?

Barely a day is going by without a national shitfit in the Houses of Oireachtas. Just before the explosive media feeding frenzy, the political news junkies were setting themselves up to track the passage of the Finance Bill 2010 through committee. Yesterday was supposed to be celebratory for the Greens, with a fresh-faced senator in the upper house – instead they lost a former leader and Junior Minister.

Who’s next and who’s up for Berocca?

The Trib leads with an exclusive by Mark Hillard on how Irish donor kidneys were sent to the UK as acute bed shortages barred those organs being offered some 580 patients on the donor waiting list in Ireland.

Hillard writes:

It is believe to be the first time kidneys have been given away because of the inability to offer them to patients in Ireland.

The incident is understood to have led to angry exchanges between a top doctor and health minister Mary Harney, sparking a crisis meeting to ensure such a failure of life-saving is never repeated.

On the numbers and destinations of the kidneys:

The incident occured on 26 January when four kidneys and one pancreas became available for transplant. While two if the kidneys were used in the Temple Street Children’s Hospital, the other organs were sent via Beaumont Hospital to the United Kingdom Transplant Service.

The minor lead on the front of the Trib is on #glee. Jennifer Bray’s piece details how George Lee spent just a day working at BCP Stockbrokers in the late 1990′s before fleeing back to RTE.

There’s also an interesting piece in the Trib claiming that Ireland’s new European commissioner, Maire Geoghegan-Quinn is refusing to give up her €100,000+ pension as a former minister and TD. Her current job yields a salary of €238,000 plus pension.

#gleelovers be comforted by the fact that there’s loads to read on all of the papers this weekend.

Sunday Independent

A Sindo/Millward and Brown Lansdowne poll leads the Sindo. The poll reveals that a majority (62%) the electorate want a national all-party government to lead the country for the duration of the economic crisis.

The piece by Jody Corcoran goes on to look at the standing of the parties:

When the headline finding is broken down, it reveals that supporters of Fianna Fáil (66 per cent), Fine Gael (56%), Labour (64%), Green (50%) and Sinn Féin (64%) want a national all-party government.

The Sindo also has a frontpager by Ronald Quinlan reporting that Ryanair honcho Michael O’Leary has “slammed” the Tanaiste for “the loss of 500 engineering jobs which the low-cost carrier had intended to create at Dublin Airport”.

O’Leary shared correspondence with the Sindo that reveal:

… how Ryanair offered to take over the former SR Technics facility at Dublin Airport and reemploy 500 of the aircraft engineers who worked there before it closed last summer.

In making the offer, Ryanair’s only condition that Ms Coughlan, as Minister for Enterprise, or the IDA would act as intermediary with the Dublin Airport Authoriy (DAA) as it negotiated the lease of the former SR Technics hanger.

The minor lead in the Sindo by Jerome Reilly reports about how Gay Byrne has “taken a sideswipe” at Brian Cowen’s social habits saying he “should not be seen sitting on a high stool of his local pub sipping pints.”

More papers as they come to hand. Links go live to the pieces as their sites get updated.

Click through to see the liveblog frame!

The IIEA has removed an event with George Lee from its site. This popped into my feedreader yesterday via the IIEA events feed.

The IIEA Young Professional Network is a networking group established to

provide young, dynamic, future leaders from different backgrounds including the business and legal communities, the media, the public sector, NGOs and academia, among others, with access to leading thinkers, policy makers and business people from both Ireland and abroad

Bad timing for promoting the event, I guess. The link to the event has now been removed from the IIEA site. Any idea when this event was schedule to happen?

Actually, why did this event need to be canceled? Is it because of the strict RTE policy on balanced political discourse?

An evening with George Lee would be interesting even though he has moved on to greener pastures. Despite the national shitfit on Lee’s resignation that we’re wallowing in, the bigger questions on the economy and the quality of representation still abound. Couldn’t the IIEA event be changed to fit?

As you can imagine, the fingers of Press Officers everywhere are bleeding. I’ll post the press releases here as I get them.

Unfortunately as the Green Party keep forgetting to add me to their press list, we’ll just close our eyes and think of Dan Boyle. Any other pressers? Mail me!

Fianna Fáil

Statement by Fianna Fáil Senator Maria Corrigan

George Lee’s resignation from Dáil Eireann has come as a shock to the people of Dublin South today.

Politics is a difficult career path and never more so than now with the current difficulties facing the country. Progress at times can be difficult and slow, but it is possible to make a difference.

George is a bright person and he had a contribution to make. But it appears that Fine Gael is not an inclusive party.

They have already been dismissive of former esteemed party leaders Alan Dukes and Garret Fitzgerald, and now George.

It’s clear that Fine Gael has no genuine interest in economic policy.

I wish George and his family well for the future.

Ends

Monday 8th February 2010

“I’m greatly saddened by George Lee’s decision to resign from Fine Gael and politics just eight months into his new Dáil career.

“In July I appointed George to Chair the Parliamentary Party’s Economic and Business Affairs Committee which all members of the Party could attend, and which  was designed to act as a core group in developing Fine Gael economic policy  for  the  next General Election. During a period of great political uncertainty when a  General Election seemed imminent George played a very important  role  in  Chairing  our Business and Economic Forums around the country  before Christmas.  These  played an integral part in planning our pre-Budget  submission.  George,  along with our other economic Spokesmen, planned  and presented that Fine Gael position to the media at Budget time. I  had  anticipated  a very important role for George in the coming period with Fine Gael after a time of settling into a new career in politics.

“As  part of our economic team George was due to attend the OECD later this week  together  with  a senior Fine Gael delegation. Regrettably that, and other  developments,  will  not  now  happen after George’s decision today.

While  I  regret  his  decision  I would like, on a personal level, to wish George and his family well in the future.”

Ends

Newsflash! George Lee has resigned his Dublin South seat and membership of the Fine Gael party after a mere nine months as he said it was made clear he had no place to institute change.

He said he went into politics for a specific reason and he didn’t believe he could achieve that. Lee said that the Fine Gael front bench were ‘nice people’. His appointment as chairman to an economic committee was pointed to as a face exercise.

Olivia Mitchell dispelled Lee’s assertions saying that he went to parliamentary party meetings but added nothing ‘new’ to the meetings. Newstalk is reporting that Mitchell and Michael Ring both said Lee should have given it more time. Epic sour grapes expected to follow.

Update!

George Lee’s Statement

I wish to announce that I have resigned from the Fine Gael Party and from my seat in Dáil Eireann today Monday 8^th February 2010.

It has been a very difficult decision, but it is one that I have taken after a great deal of reflection on my position and on the role that I have been playing in Fine Gael since I joined that Party in May last year.

The nine months since then have been a period of enormous economic upheaval. Throughout that period I have done my best to play a positive role in contributing to the national debate and to efforts to find a solution for many of the country’s economic problems.

The reality, however, is that despite my best efforts I have had virtually no influence or input into shaping Fine Gael’s economic policies at this most critical time.

The role I have been playing within the party has been very limited and I have found this to be personally unfulfilling.

When I entered politics last May I made it clear that I was doing so because I wanted to try to play a new role contributing to economic policy formulation. After nine months of trying within the political system it is now my considered view that the role available to me within Fine Gael is not a role I am happy to play.

I would like thank most sincerely all those who campaigned for me, for all of their efforts and support. I would also like to thank my Secretarial and Parliamentary Assistants for all of the help and work that they have provided to me.

I particularly want to thank the electorate of Dublin South who voted for me in such large numbers last May. It has been a great privilege and an honour to serve on their behalf. However, I do not believe I would be serving the electorate honestly if I were to continue allowing my efforts and mandate to be used to promote and market economic policies into which I have had no input.