The population of the Republic of Ireland, these days, is about four million, nine hundred and four thousand. So, vaccinating four million people by September means vaccinating in excess of 80% of the population. Given that vaccinated people, in theory, at least, don’t get Covid symptoms, or need to go to hospital, that should mean […]
Abolishing the Angelus on RTE is one of those perennials that pops up in the pre-occupations of Ireland’s dominant cultural class a few times a year. Sometimes it’s in silly season, when the press are looking for a story, but more commonly it’s when news stories about the nation’s past surface which tend to inflame […]
Lisa Montgomery was born with permanent brain damage, because of her mother’s drinking during pregnancy. When little Lisa was three years old, her stepfather slipped into the room she shared with her eight year old half-sister, Diane. Lisa, according to evidence presented years later, held her sister’s hand while the older girl was raped by […]
At some point in the 20th century history of Ireland, it was decided that the single worst thing you could be was an unmarried mother. It was so bad, in fact, that the words themselves were rarely spoken. Daughters – some of them still of childbearing age today – were warned not to “get into […]
Not especially newsworthy in and of itself, but certainly newsworthy in terms of what it might mean for Ireland: Chancellor Angela Merkel has told lawmakers in her conservative party that she expects a lockdown in Germany to curb the spread of the coronavirus to last until the start of April, top-selling Bild daily cited participants […]
Obviously, he’s not literally a Protestant. You’d hope they’d have noticed that when they interviewed him for the job. But judging by this interview he gave to the Irish Times last week, he’s more a Henry VIII loyalist than a Thomas More man: Dublin’s Catholic archbishop-elect Dermot Farrell has said he would like to see […]
This is now the fourth draft of this article. It is the fourth draft, because in the first three drafts, I had to be very careful what I said. That is because, in this new world that’s emerged over the weekend, you have to be very conscious, on the right, that you’re arguing with one […]
Paul Murphy TD has been remarkably consistent in demanding more and more Covid restrictions. So much so, in fact, that on Saturday, he approvingly retweeted an Irish Times article which described him as “the Dáil’s most consistent advocate of a zero covid strategy”. Here he is, basking in the acclaim, and criticising the Government for […]
The concerning thing here is not the number of people in hospital, actually. 1,100 patients is a lot, but a modern first world health service should be able to cope with that. No, the concerning thing is this graph: 151 admissions in the past 24 hours, and the rate increasing at more than 100 a […]
There are a number of things that are remarkable about this tweet from the Chinese Embassy in Washington. The first, though, is that it’s still up, unmolested by twitter, with no warning, or clarification attached. President Trump gets banned for dopey tweets about how he didn’t really lose the election. China, on the other hand, […]
At approximately this time yesterday morning, the question of “what to do about the schools” was remarkably uncontroversial, as these things go. In the face of an explosion in the number of cases, hospital admissions, and ICU admissions on foot of covid, the country had basically made peace with the fact that schools would not […]
Watching the highly disturbing footage from Washington DC, last night, my mind kept going back to the autumn of 2018. On October 4th, of that year, the US Senate was engaged in a confirmation hearing for now-Justice Brett Kavanaugh of the Supreme Court. Kavanaugh had been accused, you’ll recall, of sexually assaulting a high school […]