Since 2016, the Irish political and media establishment has clung to a single, unifying, and unshakeable theory about Brexit: It was a fluke result, fuelled by the confluence of several unique factors. A poor remain campaign. Lies by Brexiteers. A surge in anti-immigrant sentiment, or when they’re not being diplomatic, “racist bigotry”. Poor turnout by […]
There was a real danger there, for a while, that Tubridy and Co would have to take significant pay cuts to account for the fact that not enough people are watching RTE, but thanks to the generosity of the Fine Gael government, on your behalf, crisis averted: RTÉ is set to receive €50 million in […]
“Housing”, we are told by the Irish left, “is a human right”. It’s an interesting statement, in that it is both ambitious, and hugely limiting. On the one hand, there clearly is a human right to shelter, and not to be left exposed to the elements. On the other hand, a “house” is not a […]
One of the comfortable things about observing the British election is that whatever the outcome, the impacts on the life of the Irish viewer will be largely insignificant. If the Conservatives win a majority, a Brexit deal will pass which is acceptable to the Irish Government. If Mr. Corbyn ends up as Prime Minister, there […]
Picture the scene, if you will, five years from now, in the Dáil. Taoiseach Simon Harris is on his feet in the chamber, trying to defend his Government’s decision to end the rent freeze legislation introduced in 2019. For the past five years, rents have been frozen in place, giving, according to Harris, “valuable breathing […]
Voters in the Derry constituency of Foyle are preparing to choose, on Thursday, their new MP. A solidly nationalist seat, the winner is predicted to come from one of the two large nationalist parties, incumbent MP Elisha McCallion for Sinn Fein, and the leader of the SDLP, Colum Eastwood. Peadar Toibin’s Aontu is running councillor […]
You’d best get the weekly shop done today if you want fresh stuff in for the rest of the week, because SuperValu might not have their normal range of fresh food tomorrow: Day 4 of the @IFAmedia beef price protest. A blockade has been placed outside the Musgraves distribution centre in Kilcock this morning pic.twitter.com/n0CP96or5o […]
We’ve stayed away from the UK election on this site because, let’s face it, it’s impossible to escape it at the moment, but this has some relevance to Ireland, given the well-known problems at RTE. Boris Johnson says this morning, in Sunderland, that he may take the opposite route to that being proposed by the […]
The important thing to note here is that there has been no “cure” discovered for Downs Syndrome. It’s not that medicine has gotten better at preventing Downs Syndrome, it’s that doctors have gotten better at identifying those children before they are born, and eliminating them: “The number of babies born with Down’s syndrome has fallen […]
Credit to Louise Rosengrave, writing in The Journal, for this horrifying story: “A 67-YEAR-OLD cancer patient discharged herself from hospital due to overcrowding and died four days later, an inquest heard. Elizabeth Leavy from Montpellier Road, Dublin 7 was left waiting on a hospital trolley for six hours. “She was left in the hallway beside the bins. […]
There comes a time when you start to wonder if anyone in the Irish Government is capable of estimating the real cost of anything. If these guys told you they could re-roof your house for three thousand euros, you’d probably be wiser just to re-mortgage the house and prepare for a final bill of around […]
Fine Gael TD Dara Murphy has resigned his seat in the Dáil in order to take up a new, much better paid job, with the incoming European Commission. It’s hard to blame anyone for exchanging a seat in the Dáil for a seat in Brussels – the latter is a much better job. You won’t […]