Follow Friday is a familiar concept to people who use Twitter. Each Friday, you share your favourite fellow tweeters to your own followers and recommend that they follow them. So, taking a break from the usual theme of this blog, I thought I’d do the same.

I think you should follow these four blogs. If you’ve a suggestion of your own, add it at the end. And if you want to pimp your own blog, be my guest.

I’ll post four more in a few more months.

The Story

http://thestory.ie

The Story does for Irish political life what the Sunlight Centre for Open Politics does for the UK, except they do it better. Gavin Sheridan and Mark Coughlan gather and publish documents on public life – often through tortuous Freedom of Information processes – and make them available to the public online at The Story. They have been instrumental in revealing details of politicians’ expenses, use of funds at FAS, and the legal standing of NAMA. One of their greatest achievements has been to gain access to top civil servants’ diaries for the last half decade. More will undoubtedly follow. The Story has yet to claim a scalp, but already their presence is being felt in public life. If you’ve a few minutes to spare, scroll through the documents they have received and see if your TD’s name is there. See if your own name is there. This is good, old-fashioned investigative journalism at its best. It demonstrates the power of a simple desire to disseminate public information.

Investigative journalism is expensive which is why fewer newspapers do it. The baton has been passed to online bloggers, and Ireland is fortunate that The Story, working on a shoestring, is able to keep the information flowing.

Political Reform

http://politicalreform.ie/

Political Reform is the online home of Ireland’s top political scientists and academics. While much of their debate is focused on scenarios for reform of Ireland’s political system, other contributors provide expert analysis of election campaigns, party politics, opinion polls and the institutions of the State. This website is live. It provides an almost daily supply of context and intellectual background to the news which you don’t get in the daily newspapers.

Articles are short and accessible. The writers know what they’re talking about, and so do the discussants. If you want to know why Irish politics looks like it does, look at this blog. If you want to know how it could be reformed, look at this blog. If you despair of Irish politics, look at this blog. If you’re Taoiseach, don’t bother. It’ll annoy you.

Ireland After NAMA

http://irelandafternama.wordpress.com/

Ireland After NAMA is the result of a symposium of geographers based at NUI Maynooth, but it has widened its scope from the geography of NAMA to include the widest possible discussion on the Irish property crisis. It is the blog of the National Institute for Regional and Spatial Analysis, based at Maynooth.

While you may not have heard of the blog, you will have read the authors in the daily newpapers. Rob Kitchin’s comments in last week’s media about oversupply of houses and the need for planning reform made headlines. Like the previous blogs, this is a good example of experts from different institutions coming together to broadcast their thoughts, research and findings without fear or favour. A debate is emerging in Ireland about what went wrong with the Irish property market. Policy-makers are scrambling for solutions to complicated problems. The authors of this blog make the problems understandable and they present rational, evidence-based solutions, which – even if they are not implemented – are part of a vital national discussion.

Ronan Lyons

http://ronanlyons.com

Ronan Lyons is really really good. He is an economist with a great ability to present complicated data properly in graph format. This is a welcome skill. Not many of us are able to know what information to include in a graph and what to leave out. The trick is to know the data inside out, and Ronan knows his data. While much of his work focuses on property (he set up the economic research unit at www.daft.ie) there is a lot more here too. This is economic opinion and solid fact merged in an award-winning way.