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 […]
About once or twice a year, the Irish Government and a bunch of friendly NGOs head over to Geneva in Switzerland to report to the United Nations on Ireland’s “progress” in a range of human rights areas. This week, it was the turn of the UN Committee on Racial Discrimination (CERD). The last time Irish […]
The ad is called “the gift that gives back”. Let us sincerely hope, for this woman’s sake, that what it gives him back is a divorce: My fellow men: If you only ever listen to one piece of advice, let it be this: Do not, under any circumstances, present your wife with an exercise bike […]
The Roman Catholic Church in Ireland has had several decades of bad press, and scandals, which have resulted in widespread public alienation and falling mass attendances. Those who have kept faith with it during these hard decades cannot be accused of swimming with the cultural, or political tides. The Church in Ireland is resolutely on […]
Let’s all just make our peace with it now to save being shocked later: She’s going to get away with it. After all, it’s happened to us all, hasn’t it? You’re a trained soldier who openly admires ISIS, and you head off on your own to the territory they control, after they call all for […]
Already this morning, you’ll find, if you look for them, tweets from journalists about how the turnout is low in Ireland’s four bye-elections, which are taking place today, and will be counted tomorrow. Conventionally, the media does not discuss the specific issues around a campaign on, or before, polling day, and even though no such […]
This was buried away at the very tail end of this morning’s programme, but it was there nonetheless, and it is very important to highlight it. Here is what Bryan Dobson (who did not work for Morning Ireland at the time of the defamation) had to say: “On July 31st, 2017, Morning Ireland introduced an […]
It was a glorious day at Crumlin Children’s Hospital recently, when staff and patients were honoured by an impromptu visit from Her Serene Highness the Princess Rathgar herself: “A high-profile Government TD has admitted she was embarrassed to witness the overflowing A&E in Crumlin Children’s Hospital when she attended at the weekend with her sick […]
Before we get in to the rights and wrongs of this, it’s worth looking at what the state’s equality commission believes is a racist comment: “It points to recent examples which have caused it concern, including ….. Galway West TD Noel Grealish’s description of refugees from Africa as “economic migrants” seeking to “sponge off the system here in […]
There’s been a lot of discussion over the last few years about so-called “fake news”, which is, for those of you who don’t know, the distribution of knowingly false material dressed up as news. Think about stories like “Barack Obama was born in Kenya”, or “The Lisbon Treaty is vital for jobs and growth”. That […]
Ireland has very firm laws on animal welfare when it comes to food production. As might be expected, these laws aren’t in place so much because we love our animals, so much as that they’re in place because the European Union imposed them, and because the agri-food sector is so important to the economy. Having […]