Ireland's political and cultural magazine
From our March 2018 edition. If a tree falls in an empty forest does it make a sound: if a gun shot is fired in a building can it not be heard, especially when people are in and near that building? This is something that has puzzled me regarding the death of a Garda Sergeant, […]
Village last month reported that Wicklow County Council has agreed to sell a prime town-centre site in Bray to developer Paddy McKillen’s Navybrook Ltd for just €2.6m. The deal is contingent on Navybrook delivering a commercial development by the end of 2019. It is also a controversial sale that has raised questions about value for […]
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It is not a question of whether there was a Garda smear campaign against Sergeant Maurice McCabe. Rather, it is a matter of who planned and orchestrated it. For the first time since his prolonged agony began in 2008, McCabe was given the opportunity to speak publicly of his mistreatment by Garda management and some […]
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It’s that time of year again. The CAO applications deadline has just passed and the mock exams are about to begin for almost 60,000 sixth year students. It’s also the season for commentary on the Leaving Certificate from employers, those in the media and staff in further and higher education institutions. The main criticism centres […]
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Nama was inevitably going to be controversial. Set up to acquire loans from the Irish banks that had recklessly provided the finance for an almighty property boom and needing to be rescued when the inevitable happened, Nama was the vehicle created to work through getting some of the money back. In 2009 the property market […]
It is forty three years since the now notorious Glenanne Gang murdered three members of the Miami Showband in July 1975. Two of the band survived -Stephen Travers and Des Lee. The Gang was made up of serving RUC and UDR personnel, plus members of the UVF. The leader on the night, the infamous Robin ‘the […]
Eschatology, or the study of the end of times, is at least as old as the written word. The concept spans many of the world’s major religions, usually referring to some future day of judgement or reckoning. Beyond the realms of theology, eschatology as a concept is currently undergoing something of a renaissance, especially after […]
Silvermines, which the government spent €11m remediating in the 1990s, was back in the news in May 2017 as three cows were found dead of lead poisoning. A new inter-agency group involving the HSE, Department of Agriculture, Tipperary County Council, Environment Protection Agency, Teagasc, Irish Water, The Food Safety Authority and the Department of the […]
A documentary on three Palestinians living in East Jerusalem shows the obstacles and tragedies facing Palestinians under Israel’s illegal occupation
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I have for the last month been based in Eastern Europe, lecturing and contributing to the Anglo American University in Prague. The University has been very nice to me in light of the bedraggled and somewhat shaken image I must initially have presented. Prague, though it has its deficiencies as a city, is conveniently located […]
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Before she declined febrile suggestions that she run the US presidency on the grounds that she does not “have the DNA for it” Oprah Winfrey, the nation’s mother was attracting a great deal of serious political and media attention. Ireland has tried its hand at Dana, Gay Byrne and Sean Gallagher and may see some […]
Yet another controversy over its land disposals has hit Wicklow County Council following a decision by Councillors to hand over a valuable town-centre site in Bray to developer, Paddy McKillen junior. On Monday 15 January, Councillors voted to dispose of the 0.9 hectare Florentine site in Bray to Navybrook Ltd for €2.6m. The site has […]
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They think the right to life begins at conception and ends at birth. I grew up in a feminist household where that telling put-down of our American anti-abortion brigade was part of the lexicon. (It was also a Catholic household, but when it came to reproductive rights, as most things, feminism trumped religion). It’s a […]
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U2 released ‘Songs of Experience’ before Christmas as a companion piece to 2014’s Songs of Innocence. Thematically, ‘Songs of Innocence’ was inspired by the band’s memories of their youth in Dublin in the 1970s with Bono describing it as “the most personal album we’ve written”. ‘Songs of Innocence’ touched upon these memories as perceived four […]
For over a decade now, Dublin-based five-piece The Spook of the Thirteenth Lock have been fusing the folklore and musical traditions of their home city with sounds and processes from further afield, with elements of drone and post-rock sitting alongside the foundations of folk and trad across their previous pair of full-length records. In addressing […]
The circumstances of the demise of former Minister for Justice, Alan Shatter, diverted attention from the risk of the thwarting of his reforms of the legal profession. Infamously many ministers, and their – often informal – advisers, are lawyers. Indicative of the problem is that at the last reading of the proposed reform bill, it […]
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‘Gogglebox’ added a new face to its ever-deepening stable of television viewers last October. Pat Wallace, alongside wife Siobhan, joined TV3’s Irish rendering of BBC’s extremely popular vicarious Big Brother-style television inversion. Before then Dr Pat Wallace was notable mostly for his heroic record on the controversial Wood Quay archaeological dig from 1974 when speaking […]
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Revelations of sex abuse in all-male private schools in past decades have been powerfully conveyed across the Irish media. That barbarism should not, however, deflect attention from other enduring problems. I believe grave damage is still being done to the development of boys in ostensibly civilised institutions. Moreover, unequal educational provision maintains widening inequalities, underpinning […]
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David McWilliams is a talented analytical polymath but he is egocentric and predictions of both boom and bust for Ireland have nearly all been wrong.
In 2017 Village published a series of articles highlighting allegations of British Establishment complicity in child abuse in Ireland, particularly the crucially flawed Hart Report which was published in Northern Ireland (NI) a year ago. Judge Hart was tripped up by false evidence fed to him by MI5, MI6 and others for their own devious […]