We must be purer than pure, when surrounded by such moral degeneracy. John Charles McQuaid and Eamon Ryan have this much in common: They both desired, or desire, Ireland to be a beacon of virtue to a fallen globe.
For the moment, Ireland’s political funding laws accomplish almost nothing useful for members of the public actually interested in how their representatives fund campaigns
But perhaps your correspondent is simply getting cynical in his advancing years. Time will tell.
One thing is for sure: This is not a simple issue, and anyone who tells you they have an easy fix is pulling the wool over your eyes.
We’ll be back at it again, next year, in Azerbaijan. Just as we were here last year.
We will find out soon enough how well he has thought his policies through. And we should learn from both his successes, and his errors.
Political choices, in the case of the Donegal case, that left a man free who should not have been at liberty in this country, or any other.
At the moment, Irish voters are being told that the changes proposed to their foundational legal document are small and symbolic. That simply is not the case.
If a funeral mass is just a do-it-yourself liturgy that can be embellished with singing and dancing and celebrity spotting, then what significance does it have, by itself, at all?
Judges, of course, have a very defined and limited role: Their job is not to make the laws, but to apply the laws as written by the legislature.
By any measure, this is an extraordinary increase in the demand on the asylum system in a very short timeframe.
The Labour Party doesn’t have many electoral niches left. This might be one they’d be happy to volubly occupy.