Writing on the (belated) conviction of John McClean, the Terenure rugby coach, John McGuirk raised important questions around how and why McClean managed to avoid sanction or prosecution despite the basic facts of the matter being known to all and sundry for at least 30 years. Why, McGuirk asks, did it take the actions of […]
“It’s like the children have disappeared”. Aidan O’Rourke is pulling no punches. The lockdown of children’s sports, he says, is causing “disappearing personalities, children withdrawing entirely within themselves, right up to severe mental health, self-harm.” The GAA All-star recognises that sport might not “be a silver bullet to stop all that” but says the […]
There’s some consternation in the media this morning that the Taoiseach would make such an important and newsworthy announcement in an exclusive interview with, of all papers, the Irish Mirror. But while our friends in the Irish Times and the Independent might be a little sniffy that they didn’t get the scoop, my own view […]
A powerful interview on the steps of the criminal courts, yesterday afternoon, after former Terenure College Rugby Coach, John McClean, was sent to prison for eight years. Damien Hetherington, one of his victims, was in court to hear the verdict, and stepped in front of the cameras when it was all over. The whole thing […]
Illegal drug use is the scourge of cities, towns and rural villages right across the state. Gone are the days when the problem was confined to major urban areas. In fact, nowadays hard-core drug use is approaching something like routine. It is also the source of endless heartbreak for families, parents and children whose […]
It’s really awe-inspiring how so many of Ireland’s most beautiful churches and religious houses were built so soon after the devastation of The Great Famine in the 1840s. St Mel’s in Longford was completed in 1856, St Patrick’s cathedral in Dublin underwent a major renovation in 1864, and the Redemptorist church in Limerick was built […]
GAA star Aidan O’Rourke says the GAA needs to urge government to open up kids’ sports, as children are suffering. Do you agree? VOTE in our poll below and leave your comments here and on social media.
If you’ve never seen it, then bear with me, but one of the most striking scenes in David Lean’s dramatization of Boris Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago is when the title character arrives back in Moscow from the war, and discovers that the local reds have taken over his home and are busily stealing everything in it. Even […]
If this works out, then I’m looking forward to sending a personal bill to London for my share of the reparations owed for the famine, and other offences caused over the past 800 odd years. A west brit I may be, but I have my eye on getting a PlayStation five, and if reparations are […]
My colleague Gary Kavanagh popped this into our Gript group chat yesterday evening with a three word comment that bears repeating – “Hearts and Minds”: It’s okay not to attend a wake, funeral service, burial or cremation these days because only 10 mourners are allowed due to COVID-19 restrictions. There are other ways to sympathise […]
“I’m a hostage, and this villa has been converted into a jail, all the windows are barred shut.” “I was told I would never see the sun again”. Last night, BBC’s Panorama aired a disturbing programme featuring the secretly-recorded video messages from Princess Latifa Al Maktoum, the daughter of Dubai’s ruler Sheikh Mohammed, to her friends, explaining that she […]
Facebook through their subsidiary, Instagram, may have made a major strategic blunder in pursuing their policy of being the ‘truth czars’ of world thought, says top civil rights lawyer, Robert Barnes. Instagram recently de-platformed Robert F Kennedy Jr, but then went to the point of releasing a press statement explaining why they deplatformed him. The […]