Politics in Ireland, as in every country, has the ability to bring people together and drive them apart, in equal measures.  Of course Ireland is an interesting political environment with two political territories on the one island adding a lot of opinions from people with wildly differing viewpoints.

A cursory look at one of the one Irish blog aggregators such as Planet of the Blogs or the Irish blogs directory  provides a whole range of different political blogs.

A large number of Irish political leaning blogs, such as Gavin Sheridan’s blog, and Mick Fealty’s blog on Northern Ireland politics Slugger O’Toole have already built a large, loyal and often influential audience.

Mick was kind enough to send me some of his thoughts on the state of Irish political blogs[1]:

"Judging by the increasing number of acknowledgements (the) Slugger (O'Toole blog has) been getting, we are now beginning to get beyond being the journalist's dirty secret - ie that they read blogs at all. But there's no signs yet that they know what to do after that acknowledgement - ie get into blogging themselves.  One key member of the DUP's (Northern Irish political partner) HQ team suggested to me two years ago that hold(s) the attention of all politicians of all parties. I know that leading politicians read Slugger on a daily basis. Nearly the back room staff in all parties are plugged in to Slugger's stories and commenting zones.  In 2005, Sinn Fein became the last of the big parties to send Slugger notices of press conferences and allow contact with some of their big players out on the streets. I spent a large part of the campaign
following (former First Minister of Northern Ireland) David Trimble with his full co-operation."

Sharon O' Suillibhan, who I quoted in yesterday’s post commented that[1]:

"As a 'political blogger' , I find a blog can be useful in driving home a political message - but , on its own , it may as well not be there at all ! When the blog is occasionally 'linked' to a political organisation it , in my opinion , assists that particular political organisation to gain some credence …. In my experience , politicians and their hired suits will only give access to bloggers whom they know to be 'friendly' towards them…if a blogger was 'blacklisted' the public might never hear about it ; other outlets (ie print , radio and TV)  would be more inclined to publicise a similar event if same happened to one of their colleagues in the same field . I believe 'The Sunday Tribune' is the only national newspaper with a regular column on Irish blogs : until such time as other media outlets follow suit , the blogger will continue to be ignored by the politicians .….Still , we get great satisfaction from our blog and are , hopefully , helping to assist our readers better understand the reasons for the political situation that now exists in this country."

However, in terms of how the political parties are using blogs, the results are less impressive.

During a recent by-election, a number of the candidates (or their handlers) created blogs to support their campaigns.  While their initiative was to be welcomed, the blogs were unimpressive and highlighted the fact that blogging in Ireland is still in its infancy.  Some of the candidates did chart their campaign progress through the blogs but they all disregarded the very essence of blogging, namely providing honest, personal opinions on the matters that concerned the electorate.  At best the blogs were online diaries, at worst they were nothing more than a couple of web pages with re-printed collateral.  It’s expected that during the next election we’ll see a major growth in candidate blogging and it’s a step that most welcome.

While it’s still relatively early days for these blogs in terms of their impact on Irish society, the politicians are already taking notice.  You get the feeling that given the volume and quality of Irish political blogs, it will probably only take one major blog-led story to bring the power of the blog to people all over the island.

[1] Mick and Siobhan’s quotes have been edited by the author.