Many Irish people will be familiar with the old English phrase to describe an atmosphere of complete chaos: “It’s Bedlam in here”. Fewer, perhaps, will be aware of where the phrase comes from. In the 1300s, London’s first hospital for the mentally unwell was opened – St. Mary’s Bethlehem hospital, better known as Bedlam. In […]
It’s a long-held political axiom among nationalists in the north that the demographic trend would eventually put Sinn Féin in power in Northern Ireland. Because Catholics tended to have larger families they would eventually outvote unionists, or so it was commonly believed. This, of course, contributed to the sectarian violence and terrorism of unionist militias, from […]
The media was predictably full of images of crowds of young people in parks and on beaches again last weekend. The narrative is that they are somehow exposing the vulnerable to risk by this- but is that really true? I am a vet based in Co. Kildare. Like many, I was quite content to go […]
Give Fianna Fáil TD Cathal Crowe some credit: The last time he was in the news, it was because he was the politician with sufficient foresight to realise that Fine Gael’s proposal to honour the Dublin Metropolitan Police would be unpopular, and his intervention resulted in that pleasant pre-pandemic month we all spent debating the […]
The trouble with writing about Ireland at the moment is that it is increasingly difficult to convey to the reader the full scale of the insanity that is going on, while not ending up sounding like a hysteric yourself. But nonetheless, it is important, too, to record things that are true, and here’s a statement […]
If you were scouring the Sunday Newspapers yesterday for a word of criticism of the Government’s plan to give an amnesty, and path to citizenship, to thousands of illegal immigrants, you will have been disappointed. Pieces like that do not tend to make the Irish newspapers. Part of it, of course, is the fear that […]
Fianna Fáil TD Marc McSharry has gone rogue declaring his loss of confidence, if he ever had any, with the ‘lockdown only’ knee-jerk response in this country. In the US, the government’s leading voice on the epidemic, Dr Anthony Fauci, has tacitly admitted that the success of the non-lockdown, non-mask strategy in Texas has baffled […]
In early March, the Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly confirmed to Cabinet that he had initiated a review of Ireland’s radical abortion law. It is important to note ,however, that this was less a political choice and more of a legal requirement given that Section 7 of the 2018 Act which legalised abortion clearly states: […]
If the country ever wakes up from its Covid induced coma, like Rip Van Winkle, it shall open its eyes to a radically altered society. First-time buyers or families looking to buy homes in Dublin, are up against investment funds who are bulk-buying whole housing developments in order to rent them out. This is a […]
At about two o’clock yesterday afternoon, RTE’s “liveline” programme erupted into one of those classic “liveline” debates that makes the country tick. The subject, of course, was the announcement by the Department of Education that from yesterday forth, all new toilets in Irish schools, as well as all renovations of existing toilets in Irish schools, […]
Photo Credit: Sinn Féin Flickr (CC attribution) Over the last week, Sinn Fein and its legion of online activists have gone to war with the Irish Independent’s Philip Ryan, who has diligently and thoroughly reported on the party’s “Abú” voter contact logging system. The story has divided people: If you’re a Sinn Fein supporter, then […]
Having recently made it illegal to attend nearly every form of religious service, including accidentally making it illegal to attend your own wedding, the state has developed a new and innovative programme which will allow citizens to express their religious rights in a controlled and legal fashion by replacing priests with gardaí. Gardaí in Arklow […]