Ireland's political and cultural magazine
By David Burke. The family phone of Captain James Kelly and his wife Sheila, in Terenure, Dublin, was tapped by the gardai in 1970. Captain Kelly was one of the Arms Trial defendants who went on trial 50 years ago this week. He was acquitted. It is inconceivable that Mícheál Ó Móráin, who served as […]
By Michael Smith. Justice Minister Helen McEntee has confirmed the existence of secret and “sensitive’” Garda files relating to the Arms Crisis. She did not rule out releasing them in “appropriate” circumstances. Her comments were made on Tuesday evening in response to Seán Haughey TD of Fianna Fáil who was asking her to confirm that […]
Conor Lenihan reviews ‘Deception and Lies – the Hidden History of the Arms Crisis 1970’ by David Burke: the arms crisis was a legitimate operation of state which history has falsely judged as a nefarious adventure by Haughey who went on trial 50 years ago this week for alleged illegal gunrunning. The year 1970 was […]
“Paramilitarism: Mass Violence in the Shadow of the State” by Uĝur Ümit Üngör (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020). Reviewed by Chris Stanley. The genesis for this book was an analysis of Assad of Syria’s unleashing of militias to repress an uprising against his regime in 2011. Upon reflection the author realised that that violent episode deserved […]
by Michael Smith It’s 2020. We’re transitioning to a civilisation with a wiser sensibility. We’re defenestrating monuments that subvert our values. What’s the first erection we should remove? On its twentieth anniversary, it’s Dublin’s spike, the ‘Spire of Dublin’, a tiger in metal. Dublin lost the run of itself in a boom that started in […]
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An Outsider’s view of always present, now boiling, racism in Ireland By David Langwallner Hugo Hamilton wrote a book called ‘The Speckled People’ (2003) which to some extent mirrored my experience in growing up with a Germanic mother and a Gaeilgeoir Irish father who refused to allow him to speak English. “Speckled, ‘half and half…Irish on […]
by Mannix Flynn The root cause of the homelessness crisis in Ireland is the broken housing system. Ireland does not have a public housing system to meet the needs of the society. The biggest mistake was the decision by Labour’s Joan Burton to cut social housing spending by 72% between 2008 and 2012 (€1.38bn to […]