The so-called Enlightenment placed man at the center of the universe, edging aside the “God-centered” worldview once prevalent among Western elites. Then came the Industrial Revolution, spawning the age of “Economic Man.” Matters of consequence came to be viewed primarily through the prism of economic impact. That is something that both Karl Marx and the robber barons […]
Independent Wexford TD Verona Murphy has hit out at regulators over new “Stalinist” rural planning rules that she says will force rural people into “urbanised ghettos”, claiming that a “Dublin-centric government” does not understand rural issues. “For a long time now there’s been a lot of disquiet in relation to planning regulation and particularly in […]
A report by The Legal Services Regulatory Authority (LSRA) has shown that during the period from 7 September 2020 to 26 March 2021, it received a total of 2,352 phone calls and e-mails requesting information and/or complaint forms. This represents a substantial increase on the 1,271 emails and phone calls received during the previous […]
Back in 2017, Columbia University’s Knight First Amendment Institute sued President Donald Trump for blocking seven of his followers. Apparently they had criticised him, and the thin-skinned owner of the @realDonaldTrump account retaliated by blocking them. This made it impossible for the seven followers to read Trump’s tweets or to respond to them. “Now I […]
Dr. Martin Feeley served as Clinical Director of the Dublin Midlands Hospital Group until September 2020, when he resigned after the HSE said his criticisms of lockdown made his position “untenable”. In this piece, he sets out the reasons why, after 15 months, a comparison between the experiences of Ireland and Sweden have served only […]
Responding adequately to the sad news of the Kambala sexual assault petition — the latest spotlight on the sexual assault epidemic — is a sobering challenge for us all. Leading educators in our secondary schools, depressed by the recent revelations and struggling to find solutions, are themselves revisiting calls for better “consent training” for students. But, as others have argued, “consent […]
This is the second article of two that review NPHET’s decision to advise the Irish government against a border quarantine in February 2020. NPHET would later go on to reverse its position on the matter, but by that stage it was too late. The first wave was already well underway, and NPHET’s indecision at this […]
When it comes to explaining, for an Irish audience, the nature of the Popular Mobilization Forces, as Iraq’s Iran-backed Shia Muslim paramilitary force call themselves, it’s quite hard to know where to begin. The first thing to say, probably, is that as an Iranian-backed, explicitly Shiite organisation, you have to be a Shia Muslim to […]
Joe Biden wants a global minimum corporate tax, as you may have heard. Here’s the summary from the Financial Times: The Biden administration is calling for the world’s biggest multinational companies to pay levies to national governments based on their sales in each country, as part of an ambitious proposal for a global minimum tax. […]
Much as some engineers would like to ignore politics, it’s irresponsible to do so. I’m not saying you have to be a political junkie, but an awareness of the ultimate purposes and effects of the organisation you work for is part of being a responsible engineer. Writing in the Human Life Review, bioethicist Wesley J. Smith […]
Media reporting around the issue of Assisted Suicide tends to focus almost exclusively on personal stories – and often gives the misleading impression that helping a person to end their life is the only alternative to a painful death. As palliative care experts frequently point out (though their expert advice is given scant media coverage) […]
The chair of the Law Society’s Family and Child Law Committee, Helen Coughlan, has said that Ireland has been left with “third world infrastructure” in the family courts and that urgent investment is needed to prevent children and vulnerable people from paying the price. The chair of the Child Law Committee went on to say: […]