EVERY evening, TheJournal.ie brings your Daily Fix: our pick of the highlights (and some of the lows) of today’s campaign trail.

GOOD DAY FOR:

• Getting down with the kids - Labour and Fine Gael were both resisting the urge to break into Whitney’s The Greatest Love of All as they each released their manifestos on what they are going to do for children and the youth if they get into power.
• Ursula Halligan - TV3′s intrepid political correspondent was given the rubberstamp of approval from Fianna Fail for her “incisive” interview of Enda Kenny last night. Whether she wanted it or not.

BAD DAY FOR:

• The Irish video game industry - It emerged that Fine Gael’s ‘Go Ireland’ video game, highlighted in last night’s Daily Fix, was created by an American company. Is there a new Fine Gael slogan we don’t know about? “Getting Ireland Working,” suggested some wags on Twitter.
• Every party leader but Gilmore - TheJournal.ie‘s Twitter Tracker is showing today that only Labour’s Eamon Gilmore is managing not to stir the ire of the Twitter masses. The sentiment of tweets about him remains “neutral” but the other four leaders of the main political parties here have veered into “negative”.

DANGEROUS SOCIAL MEDIA TERRITORY OF THE DAY:

Fine Gael’s Facebook moderators have had to deal with the anger of a stream of would-be voters to clarify their position on gay marriage. The most retweeted #ge11 Tweet of the day according to our Twitter Tracker is from @DaraghLally :

Correction: Fine Gael are deleting comments and BLOCKING people who want to engage with them. #ge11 #censorship #Ireland #no2FG

The Fine Gael press office has told TheJournal.ie that they were only deleting abusive comments and in instances where they believe a “co-ordinated attack” was being launched on their page.

LEADERS’ DEBATE DISTRACTION TACTIC OF THE DAY:

What leaders’ debate? The Green Party had just released the statistics from its eight-hour online Q&A session which they call a “first in Irish politics”.

John Gormley sniffed that “the Greens may have been excluded from the three-way Leaders’ debate but we were successful in answering hundreds of questions from the Irish public about policies and politics and the election campaign”. Over 1,000 questions were answered they say.

This is John Gormley answering questions today – although he appears to have someone else do the fiddly techy stuff for him…

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