One side-effect of the Willie O’Dea affair is that Twitter is now firmly part of Irish politics. Green Party chair Senator Dan Boyle used Twitter to turn up the heat on the former minister.
“As regards to Minister O’Dea I don’t have confidence in him. His situation is compromised. Probably be a few chapters in this story yet,” the senator tweeted at 6.30pm on Wednesday, 17 February. Just over 24 hours later, O’Dea had resigned.
Most of the online reaction to the tweet was positive, but in the letters page of the Irish Times one correspondent said: “I used to think Green Party chairman Dan Boyle was a serious and developing politician. Now I find he hides behind Twitter to voice his opinions about his colleagues’ behaviour…”
So, apart from Dan Boyle’s nuclear tweet, how have Irish politicians and parties been using Twitter?
Party tweets – Greens have most followers
| Party | Twitter handle | No. of followers | No. following | No. of tweets |
| Green Party | @greenparty_ie | 2,313 | 2,162 | 819 |
| Labour Party | @labour | 1,900 | 840 | 1,052 |
| Sinn Fein | @sinnfeinireland | 1,365 | 37 | 789 |
| Fianna Fail | @fiannafailparty | 1,188 | 138 | 494 |
| Fine Gael | @finegaeltoday | 729 | 37 | 737 |
(Statistics taken during 9.30-10.45am, 19 February 2010)
On 15 May 2009, in the run-up to the local elections, the Green Party published statistics on its candidates’ use of social networking sites.
Number of Green Party candidates with:
- Facebook accounts – 32
- Twitter accounts – 12
- Websites or blogs – more than 20
Green Party:
- YouTube video views – 44,500
- Twitter followers – 474
Meanwhile the Labour Party states: “Labour was one of the early Irish users of Twitter, which allows us to tweet short messages relating to all aspects of our work. We regularly post messages and occasionally those who follow us receive sneak previews of things we are doing. Of course you will also find us on Flickr, on Bebo and Facebook.”
