On Tuesday, Taoiseach Micheál Martin reported back to the Dáil from the weekend’s EU Council meeting in Brussels. The main issue of concern was the implications of the lack of an agreement between the Commission and London prior to Britain leaving the EU at the end of December. Martin echoed the Brussels line that the […]
It might seem strange to ask is the pandemic over when Ireland is just about to embark on the strictest 6-week lockdown in Europe. However, a new series of articles[1] by eminent immunologists and scientists have come to that very conclusion. In a related article here in Gript yesterday, John McGuirk asks why the hospitalisation […]
The Lancet is one of the world’s oldest and most prestigious medical journals. It is also highly influential in the world of health policy formulation. It can quite literally be a career making event for a researcher or a scientist to have their work published in the journal. Indeed, in the niche world of […]
South Korea has a problem: according to critics its abortion legislation is out of date. So earlier this month, a bill to decriminalize it up to the fourteenth week of was tabled in the South Korean parliament. South Korea has banned abortion since 1953. Exceptions were introduced in 1973 for cases of rape or incest. […]
Ten days ago the Catholic Archbishops of Ireland requested to meet Taoiseach Micheál Martin to see if Mass could be celebrated publicly during Covid-19 restrictions. Faithful Catholics around Ireland, upset at being deprived of Mass, were encouraged by the Archbishops’ show of leadership. Others, though, questioned their intervention on the basis that religion isn’t deserving […]
By now, readers will be familiar with the single strongest argument against Ireland’s impending level five lockdown: Cases are rising, yes, but hospitalisations, and deaths, remain low, notwithstanding the thirteen fatalities reported yesterday. Is the low number of deaths and hospitalisations, as some argue, a glitch? Or is it part of a wider pattern that’s […]
It seems Dr. Ebun Joseph is not finished with us yet. On November 9, she will be one of the speakers at an event hosted by Carlow IT and funded by the National Forum for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, which itself gets a chunk of the education budget. The theme […]
There’s probably been no more contentious subject in Ireland over the past six months or so than the question of mandatory facemasks. There are bigger questions, sure, on which the population is more evenly divided – lockdown or no lockdown; schools open, or schools closed; the infernal debate about “wet pubs”, and so on. But […]
As the country moves into level 5 restrictions once again, the rules are clear for everybody: Shops and businesses are closing. The Dáil continues to sit in the National Convention Centre, so that they can socially distance. Mass is too dangerous to be said. Going further than five kilometres from your own home is to […]
Every nation cherishes an image of itself. In Australia, we are often told that ours was formed on the beaches of Gallipoli, but it’s older and more complex than that. Long before the Australian union, the people of each of the Australian colonies developed self-images of their own, in great variety. Few directly referred to […]
The conclusions of Australia’s Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse are seldom questioned. But the perspective which underpinned the work of the Royal Commission is indifferent, if not hostile, to religious belief. Jane Adolphe and Ronald J. Rychlak help to remedy that deficiency in the splendid study which they have edited, Clerical Sexual Misconduct: an […]
The continued spectre of ordinary people feeling overwhelmed by fear cannot be allowed to persist, if only the gatekeepers of public information were to oblige.