Ireland's political and cultural magazine
The resignation of the chairman and vice-chairman of the Kildare and Wicklow Education and Training Board (KWETB) in early December is the latest dramatic development in a controversy that has already been marked by the early retirement of its chief executive, Seamus Ashe. Chairman and Wicklow councillor Jim Ruttle and vice-chairman, Kildare Fine Gael councillor, […]
The Ulster Freedom Fighters will not be well pleased The Ulster Freedom Fighters (UFF) will not be well pleased to learn that their name has been taken in vain by a distasteful group of conmen hellbent on covering up the existence of a VIP paedophile network in Ireland and the UK. We will refer to […]
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In the wealthy suburbs of south Dublin, the redbricked facade of Terenure College has stood out as a beacon of respectability and status for more than 150 years. A training ground for the elite of Irish society, run by the Carmelite order of priests, it has produced captains of business, pioneering doctors and legal giants. […]
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The DemocraticUnionist Party (DUP)’s stance on Brexit has left it out of kilter with a key part of its constituency, the business community. It appears to have campaigned for a referendum result it did not expect and has recently drawn the attentions of Europe to a position on Customs Union and the Single Market that […]
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The row over Brexit and the subsequent confusion over the legal status of the agreement made between the British government and EU negotiators on 8 December, has overshadowed significant movement in the political dynamic involving the main political parties. After emerging somewhat battered and bruised from his ultimately futile defence of former Justice Minister, Frances […]
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This article asks what is meant by the concept of The Rule of Law and, after the resignation of a second Minister for Justice in two years, whether such a concept is honoured in Ireland today? Dysfunctionality and hypocrisy have dug a chasm between the theoretical affirmation of the rule of law by lawyers in […]
Last month, Minister for Education and Skills Richard Bruton mentioned that “the idea of courses to upskill homemakers were among a number of steps under consideration” to deal with the shortfall of teachers in key subject areas. Calling them “homemakers” may have been correctly gender-neutral, but the issues at stake are not. How could they […]
Heritage and the Irish Psyche The cynic who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing drives the perception of properties in Ireland. There is a belief within the Irish psyche that new is best, even when it comes to our historic properties. We flock to perambulate around our country houses and their […]
Trinity College’s recent Conor Cruise O’Brien centenary symposium was a largely uncritical exercise. It was especially notable that it was so as it focused on Irish politics. Invited US academics, who discussed O’Brien’s assessment of the American Revolution, appeared unaware of O’Brien’s distinctly illiberal local contribution. Reverential tones underpinned contemplation of O’Brien’s analysis of Irish […]
‘I deem as heroic those who have the harder task, face it unflinchingly and live. In this world, women do that.’ – James Salter ‘I know too well those marvellous lips. By Allah, I’m not lying if I say I love sipping their finerthanwine delicious dew.’ – Hafsa Bint Al-Hajj Arrakuniyya about her lover Abu […]
In the early 1980s the government decided to try to get children to drink more milk. I’m not sure that there had been a problem with children not drinking milk. As I recall, that’s all we drank. Yet it introduced a free milk scheme. The milk was to be distributed through schools and it was […]
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One in four Twitter followers of Philip Boucher Hayes is a fake account, the RTÉ broadcaster announced on his Twitter feed recently. Around the end of August, Boucher Hayes had noticed an uptick in new followers on Twitter, which he had monitored since. “Previously 100/150 people would follow me every week”, Boucher Hayes posted on […]
The creation of lists and listicles titilatingly combines the writer’s self-indulgence with a gratifying boxticked clarity. The October 1 edition of the Sunday Times did this better than most, on a subject of notorious sensitivity – music, as a much-feted “101 Irish Albums We Love” list, compiled by Something Happens vocalist/Newstalk doyen Tom Dunne, ripped […]
Nominative Determinism An English Tory with the damning name of Chris Pincher has been accused of making unwanted advances including by way of an unwanted neck massage, to an athlete, while wearing a bathrobe. The victim, a former Olympic rower, who divulged the disputed details is appropriately called Alex Story. Similarly rapacious, the former British […]
2017 marks 25 years since the start of the Bosnian war which followed the breakup of the formerly Communist Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. After Slovenia and Croatia seceded from Yugoslavia in 1991, the multi-ethnic Socialist Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina passed a 1992 referendum for independence. Nearly half of its citizens were Bosnian Muslims. […]
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Did bats figure in your Hallowe’en? They neither relate much to the Bat Man super-paradigm nor to the spooky, ghoulish, symbols of death that Hallowe’en stories would have you believe. Instead they may hold the key to eternal youth. This was one of the topics discussed at the ninth Irish Bat Conference held in October. […]
I recently concluded a criminal case in the Crown Court in Manchester; a city I had not visited in over 20 years. Much has changed while I’ve been gone. It is a little less frenetic, with no Tony Wilson or Hacienda club, and a good deal more gentrified. Salford, the traditional working-class area, immortalised in […]
In September, Elisabeth Moss twice used the word “fuck” as she accepted the best-actress Emmy for her role in the TV series ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’. As it was a live broadcast, the network (CBS) was using a time delay and so was able to bleep out the offending words. There were many reports online and […]
The Government intends to hold seven referendums over the next two years, and the Citizens’ Convention is due to consider Ireland’s referendum practice before it winds up next spring. With a contentious abortion referendum looming up soon after that, this is a good time to consider how we run referendums. A code of good practice […]
In January 2017 the Historical Institutional Abuse Inquiry (HIAI) reported on the treatment of children in care in Northern Ireland. The Inquiry, chaired by Sir Anthony Hart, conducted its extensive task with considerable speed and reported on the day of President Donald Trump’s inauguration. The Inquiry shared something else with the then incumbent US president, […]
