Every year since at least 2005, in the run up to Halloween, the Gardai roll out Operation Tombola. The main aim of the Operation is to disrupt, seize and prevent the supply of illegal fireworks and to mitigate the associated public disorder and anti-social behaviour that usually goes with such sales. As the law currently […]
Female genital mutilation (FGM) is a barbaric physical and human rights violation of young girls and women and is internationally recognised as such. It involves the partial or total removal of the external female genitalia, or “any practice that purposely changes or injures the female genital organs for non-medical reasons.” FGM is mostly carried out […]
Since 2012 at least 800 sex offenders have been released from Irish prisons with little or no effective safeguards in place for those whom they may wish to harm, including children. This is according to the Independent TD for Roscommon-Galway Denis Naughten, who, yesterday challenged the Minister for Justice Helen McEntee on the glacial pace […]
The European Asylum Support Office has just published its first Country of Origin Information (COI) Report on Venezuela, and the news is not good. What is genuinely startling however is the scale of the attempted exodus that has taken place. The EASO observations on the Report find that: “the deterioration of the political, security and […]
Back in June, the Gardaí reported that there had been 93 incidents of ‘assault’ recorded which involved intentionally spitting or coughing at a Garda member. It is little wonder then that a survey of garda rank and file members found that 87% welcomed the introduction of so called ‘spit hoods’ as an additional layer […]
The Medical Independent is reporting today on a survey which has found that more than half of non-EU doctors would not recommend to colleagues to work for the HSE: “The survey, which was conducted by the recently-established group ‘Train Us for Ireland’, found that 53.5 per cent of respondents would not make such a recommendation. […]
The public’s reaction to Golfgate has been swift and brutal. Indeed, it has now occasioned more public mea culpa’s than you could shake a stick at. Yet still the public and political appetite for scalps, of both the EU and judicial variety has not been sated. No doubt this lamentable saga, with all its […]
The cost to the HSE of reimbursing medicines and drug treatments now stands at about €2.5 billion annually. By way of contrast; back in 2014 the annual bill was about €1.8 billion. A large proportion of our present costs are routinely attributed to the growing population of older persons. But this is, at best, only […]
The recent escalation of violence in Balbriggan has highlighted the absolute plague that is anti-social behaviour in our communities. Local Fianna Fail TD, Darragh O’Brien, has now acknowledged that events are rapidly getting out of control with entire shopping centres effectively becoming no-go areas for local residents. Now that he is the Minister for Housing […]
A commitment to establish a Citizens’ Assembly on education was a core feature of the recent general election manifesto of the Green Party. This proposal was based on its belief that there is a fundamental “need to re-evaluate the outcomes of education” and to bring about “structural changes” at all levels of our education […]
Speaking across the Dáil chamber in 1962, the formidable TD John McQuillan described the Minister for Justice, Charlie Haughey, as someone who was “unhelped, unprotected and unloved.” Even at this early stage, it is a political characterisation that could be easily and fairly applied to the current government. Unhelped by a series of self-imposed gaffes […]
Kathy Sheridan, in yesterday’s Irish Times, sensitively engages with the issue of assisted suicide. She does so as someone who has been through the palliative care experience with her own departed husband. But she also specifically does so in light of the statement made by cervical cancer screening champion Vicky Phelan: “Allow me to die […]