The Canadian province of Quebec will expand the eligibility criteria for euthanasia to include people with severe and incurable mental illness, says Health Minister Danielle McCann. The guidelines will be drafted by the Quebec college of physicians. Both the minister and the college believe that few people would be affected. “We don’t expect many of these patients […]
Not long ago, the gay rights movement was a small group of people struggling to follow their dispositions within a larger heterosexual culture. Gays and lesbians were underdogs, vastly outnumbered and loosely organized, sometimes subject to discrimination and abuse. Their story was tragic, their suffering dramatized by AIDS and Rock Hudson, Brokeback Mountain and Matthew […]
A group of protesters are gathering daily outside a social housing development site in Mulhuddart village for what they describe a “House The Irish First” protest. They believe the houses on site, though still under construction, have already been earmarked for foreign-nationals, despite the fact that many locals still remained on the housing list. Protesters […]
Climate scientists generally believe that man-made impacts on global climate can only be practically detected in climate records since around 1950, as our CO2 emissions were comparatively very small before then. Figure 1 below shows this very clearly with over 86% of total estimated CO2 emissions since around 1950. Whenever the media report on climate […]
Sherelle Jacobs is right to warn that ‘climate change is complex’ even while Sir David Attenborough’s warnings, in ‘onomatopoeically crumbly prose’, echo in our heads, and visions of Australian bush fires and other disasters are held up by the BBC as warnings of climate apocalypse; she is also right to be sceptical about ‘the world’s […]
Charles Moore notes that actor Laurence Fox, ‘who shot to fame in political debate last week after neatly repelling claims on the BBC’s Question Time that criticisms of the Duchess of Sussex are racist, has identified this as the central false doctrine. Don’t automatically believe, he says. Instead you should “listen to the victim”, and […]
In a sudden reversal of policy for Fianna Fail Micheál Martin yesterday pledged to introduce an emergency rent freeze if elected. This comes one day after Fianna Fail published legal advice they had been given which said that such a freeze would be unconstitutional. Between Tuesday, when Fianna Fail launched their housing policy, and Wednesday, […]
Because of our proportional election system, Ireland is nearly always governed by a coalition between at least two political parties. The last majority, one party Government was elected in 1977, when Jack Lynch promised everything short of Nirvana to win the election, and then fell from power shortly thereafter when it became apparent that he […]
Fine Gael’s election campaign seems to have been derailed in part by the understandable anger felt by voters at the mess the government has made of the pensions issue. The issue has arisen because private sector workers retire at 65 but since 2014 they have not been entitled to access the State pension until 66 […]
Time is ticking for Europe, as it begins to take its demographic challenge seriously. The European Commission recently appointed Dubravka Šuica from Croatia to the position of Vice-President for Democracy and Demography. Her mission letter outlines her job for the next five years: “ensuring that Europe understands and responds to one of its deepest lying […]
Gerry Adams’ announcement that he is retiring from politics brings to an end one of the most significant public lives of the past century. He is without doubt a major historical figure whose influence on events in Ireland was hugely significant. I cannot claim to have known him well. I did know him but I […]
On Tuesday an historic trial commences in Belgium. It will be the first time that doctors have faced criminal charges over euthanasia since it was legalised in 2002. Three of them have been charged with illegal poisoning. If convicted, they face stiff prison sentences. The deceased was a 38-year-old woman, Tine Nys, who died in 2010. Three doctors […]