george lee steps down

Dail an the way this goverment is ran is outdated system an is a complete joke!

Georgie Boy missing the RTE limelight

Public service pay cuts starting to bite.

Attention seeker.

Sean O'Rourke giving him a good grilling on RTE now. Think george obviously expected to be FG leader by now, not happy with lack of progress

Bizarre.

Actually thought it was bizarre from the start. Am I right in saying he decided to join FG and run for election without meeting Kenny?

Fine Gael would walk the next election if they hadn't got such a muppet for a leader

How would they walk it if Kenny was not the leader?

Bizarre.....either there is more to the story or George is awful flakey......

ASK GEORGE LEE HOW MUCH IT COSTS TO RUN ANOTHER BY-ELECTION

NOT THAT IT WILL BOTHER HIM BACK IN THE PUBLIC SERVICE

smoking bimbo (nap)
fianna fail mole (nb)

fine gael must now jettison enda kenny to give themselves any chance in next election ....either way they re lookin bad

If Enda Kenny manages to lose elections to Bertie Ahearn who ran half his campaign from the tribunal courts and to Biffo who is surely the most horrific excuse for a polititcian in our lifetime then he should return his past 20 years FG income.

I'm not surprised with Lee's resignation to be honest there was always the hint of a publicity stunt on FG's behalf and his views are polar to Richard Bruton.

He never lost an election to the biffo. We should never forget how undemocratically Cowen assumed the highest political office in the state. Not that Kenny would be much better, merely the lesser buffoon. FG would be in a majority government now if EK had walked after the last election to allow Bruton lead the opposition.

I admire George Lee for his decision.Time to emigrate.

Vincent Browne KNEW, speculating as he did in his newspaper column on Sunday: "(George) Lee has disappeared into the thickets of the FG backbenches. You expect him to emerge in a high-profile RTE documentary some night to tell us how lonely he is and how much he wants to come home."

reb 08 Feb 15:35


I admire George Lee for his decision.Time to emigrate.

=========
your not wrong m8

If only all of us were afforded the choices in life that George Lee has. He should have got stuck in until the next election. I resent that he will be allowed remain in our employ by waltzing back in to the RTE.

What exactly is Lee anyway,the last feller held in such high esteem was Eddie Hobbs and they aint talking about him much anymore.

doubtless the pr1ck will be on Tubridy within a fortnight, then have a book out within 2 months

reckon he wanted to get back to montrose before Forest Gump doppelganger Charlie Bird ....what the f eck will rte do with these two jokers now ....celebrity farm ? i am a current affairs reject Get Me Outta Hear??? .....who cares their salaries are guranteed ....tis a great little country

Lee is smart, he sees whats coming, the contagion is only starting

party politics is pointless,a td spends his time trying to please his masters by toeing the party line,not thinking of how he can make the country work better or speaking out about topics he feels strongly about. Lee has realised he is wasting his valuable time and is getting out before he goes slowly mad..Sadly we the electorate are left with usual bunch of mediocrities to lead us..The young will emigrate like before and the rest of us will carry on as always..I will never vote again on anything,fine fail,fine gael,,who cares...PS rte should send lee to the states to take over from charlie bird,and let bird enter politics,,now he would be suitable td material.

contagion -- good word, well done

Airing Fianna Gael's dirty laundry in public here and asking serious questions about Enda Kenny & Bruton. Say Cowen & co are rubbing their hands with glee here

he made some bol.l.ix of himself.made of straw...full of his own importance

agree with bellico.

Party politics, any p,rick in a party that sides with party policy even tho it doesnt agree with his own view is a muppet

"George is an ejit" Ivan Yates has his say

Personally think that George Lee has let the contry down.

Long term wont be much of a factor. It will be analysed and seen as a reflection on Irish politics as much as Fine Gael.

If it was it some way a catalyst for any internal heave to oust Kenny then it might yet become a positive for FG. A substantial proportion of the country will not forgive and will vote for anyone as long as they are not Fianna Fail, however many of these people cant bring themselves to vote for a Kenny-led party. Varadkar or Bruton then maybe.

We have just witnessed the results of the worst goverment in living memory (Ahern's goverment), the current government is not as bad but are guilty be assocation. The galling thing is that it coincides with the worst opposition in living memeory as well. If they had any gumption or craft they would be in power by now - I think they delieberately avoid creating a crisis to fell the government just hoping that by 2012 things will be more manageable. Just to comfortable right now.

Did George not realise the nature of Politics before he jumped in. Enda Kenny should have looked after him a lot better and left no stone unturned with a view to getting into Power. Could be a fatal mistake by Kenny. As the end result will be further disenchantment with politics.

FG have to lie in their bed now. They have shown themselves as a joke of an organisation which is some achievment in todays political class in Ireland.
Kenny is holding his party back and slowly they are realising this.
Lee didn't do much wrong imho. He was taken advantage of as a "Face". FG must have given him some B5hit regarding his future political prospects to lure him out of the cosy set in Montrose.

What it does show is the complete waste of time, space and money most TDs are. Lee only now realising that most TDs have Zero influence in how the country is governed and are nothing more than over paid, glorified town councillers.

browne filletin lee on TV3 right now

That Niamh Lyons wrecks my head.... utterly clueless imo...

It amazes me that people have a problem with Lee resigning.
Would they prefer he sits there and milks his wage for the rest of his career like most of them do. Lee has done the state a service by highlighting the lack of input most TDs have in the Dail.

Some tabloid hackette trying to have a cut off him now.....well out of her depth there

Lee after spending all day facing the media gets Browne up last!

He really shoulda avoided Vincent if at all possible or at least saved it til another day.

he is not actually saving the state money ....another expensive by election looms and he returns to his even more generously renumerated positioned in taxpayer funded RTE
i ve no problem him jackin on a point of principle and enjoy the discomfort it causes the Blueshirts ...but the guy is clearly an ego maniac and appears to have no firm political views

Since when did people care how much a byelection cost?
such a spurious point imho.

What he is paid by RTE is up to them and you should question RTE management instead of their employees if you feel they are over paid. I've never seen anyone turn down a job on account of the wages being too high so why should he be the first?

Fair play to him i'd say. He is naive in the extreme getting involved with FG in the first place when he was obviously being used as a face, but at least he has stood by his principles.

As for Brown, he's a standing joke of a journalist. Whinges and moans, but never gives a realistic viewpoint of his beliefs.

Maybe the cost of By-Elections is also why the Donegal seat has still not been filled. Theres democracy for you in this country. A constituency being denied a representative in the Dail because it doesnt suit the ruling partys time table. Real banana republic stuff there.

i agree with u about Donegal .....but u were making a virtue of George not staying there and drawing his salary....
i was pointing out that the guy is not losing out any bread by jackin

indeed iam sure he would have stomached Dail Eireann for another few years if he did nt have the RTE gig to go back to

Spurs, assuming you are a betting person, the only thing you can be sure about is death.

Presumably when agreeing to stand for Fine Gael he was given some indication that he would be involved in policy formulation at or would have some meaningful involvment n party activities. After 9 months, perhaps having being ignored by party bigwigs, he feels he was exploited as a publicity stunt. In my opinion, he has copped out as 9 months can't be considered a reasonable time to have given it a shot. At the same time it does appear to be damaging to Fine Gael in that they're losing talent from a seemingly limited group of politicians. Any decent opposition would be odds on certainties to defeat Fianna Fail at the next election but this shower don't convince as being able to deliver a much needed regime change

Just when George is back in RTE on his"ministerial salary" the taxpayer will be paying for yet another by-election.
DOUBLE WHAMMY

couldnt understand his reasons to run in the first place other than he had the luxury of failing back on the RTE job if it went tits up as it has... was he expecting that we could muscle in and dictate FG finiance policy and sideline arguably there most experienced spokesman in Richard Bruton... What on his track record would warrant such a position ?..I think he was made a comple clown of himself TBH...

Id say this finished him ...FG and labour control the council.

€153 Million Spend Could Bankrupt Council by Laura Webb

Fine Gael's Lee Says Council is Ignoring Consultants Advice

Plans by Dun Laoghaire Rathdown County Council to press ahead and spend €153m purchasing and developing lands in Kilternan in south Dublin could bankrupt the council, Dublin South TD George Lee warned this week. The Fine Gael TD has heavily criticised plans by the council which, he says, is failing to follow the advice of their own consultant's report recommending DLRCC not to proceed with the scheme.

The council plans to spend €128m to purchase the land and to spend another €25m to build roads and other structures in Kilternan and Glenamuck. Documents received by Lee under the Freedom of Information Act show that the council hopes to recoup the money by charging a levy of €43,000 on all apartments built in the area in the future.

"This is crazy economics and simply will not work. A €43,000 levy is a multiple of the levies that have been imposed on new apartment developments anywhere else in the country. The plan also breaches the Department of the Environment's guidelines on such schemes by virtue of the fact that the levy is far higher than the levies charged by any other local authorities."

However, the council said it rejected any suggestion that it should abandon the provision of roads, public transport and drainage infrastructure which "is required to facilitate the proposed development of the area". "The council is conscious of the fall in land values over the past three years and we are considering the implications of this for the Levy Scheme," a spokesperson said.

DLRCC said a Local Area Plan for the Kilternan/Glenamuck area was adopted in July 2007 which identified the need to develop additional roads, public transport and drainage infrastructure which would be required to facilitate development on the scale that was envisaged for the area.

"In order to fund the required infrastructure a special Levy Scheme was also adopted. While it is accepted that the costs involved in providing this infrastructure were very high, this reflected the estimated cost of land acquisition at the time the scheme was prepared. The scheme was adopted by the elected members, following a statutory public consultation process," the council said.

However, Deputy Lee said that documents showed very clearly that the council's economic and planning consultants advised the council not to proceed with this scheme. Deputy Lee said he was now calling on the council to follow the advice of their own concultants and announce that they will formally abandon this project.

I would be absolutely FUMING WITH UNCONTROLLABLE ANGER if I'd voted for this muppet (Lee)