News

By John Gibbons. While global pollution crises, from climate change to plastics in the oceans, are showing no signs of improvement, the worst effects, we in the ‘developed world’ are reassured to believe, are clustered in poorer countries and distant ecosystems. One of the many environmental paradoxes is that, while global ecological  indexes are in […]

Border Fox The Facebook site of ‘Dessie O’Hare Crafts’ fronted by ‘Dessie from Keady who attended St Patrick’s High School’ sells innocuous  republican memorabilia: glass Easter lilies and the like. But have no doubt it is the Border Fox gone retail. In October 1977, O’Hare and his IRA gang killed Margaret Ann Hearst, a female […]

By Michael Smith. I interviewed Catherine Murphy, Independent TD for Kildare North, in a sunny Dáil coffee shop on May 5th. She was accompanied by her advisor Anne Marie McNally. They were both friendly, informed and irreverent. Though she was due on the Ray D’Arcy show Catherine Murphy appeared relaxed. She used the term “we” […]

And what RTE, the Irish Times and the Journal removed, and the Indo never published. Dail Eireann 28 May 2015 Comptroller and Auditor General (Amendment) Bill 2015: First Stage Deputy Catherine Murphy: I move: That leave be granted to introduce a Bill entitled an Act to amend the Comptroller and Auditor General (Amendment) Act 1993 […]

Denis O’Brien, Ireland’s most powerful media owner, is – as an individual – exercising an extraordinarily chilling effect on journalism and journalists after grossly negative findings against him in the Moriarty Tribunal. When Village asked Sam Smyth to contribute a piece about a media topic of his choice for this edition, he replied “I’m still […]

By Michael McNamara, TD. Though many might want to tell Paul Murphy to toddle off or stronger words to the same effect – and he deserves at least that – Murphy  wasn’t just an ordinary citizen who accidentally wandered into the Dáil chamber to ask a question out of turn this week. He was there […]

Aosdána, 70 Merrion Square, Dublin 2 14 April Dear Editor, In his article in your publication, dated 14th April 2015, Mannix Flynn is wrong when he states, regarding election to the position of Saoi of Aosdána, “Currently, if a position is vacant for one of the Saoi (Saoithe) all it needs is for certain insiders […]