In May 2018, with just a week to go to the vote in the referendum, the Yes vote was slipping in the polls. An Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, made an urgent and emotive pitch to voters. In an interview with Seán O Rourke on the country’s national radio station, RTE, he focused on the danger of using abortion […]
New figures from an Oireachtas Budget Office shows that Ireland is actually exporting vast quantities of material which could, with modifications, be used for testing in the Coronavirus pandemic. Along with a lack of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), one of the most infuriating and difficult aspects of this crisis has been the government’s the failure […]
Some were surprised last week when the deputy Prime Minister of Japan, Taro Aso, blasted the WHO, referring to them as the “Chinese Health Organisation” for their alleged role in helping the Chinese Communist Party to cover up the coronavirus. Aso said: “People think the World Health Organization should change its name. It shouldn’t be […]
Love him or loathe him, he’s right here: “The WHO really blew it,” Mr Trump said in a Twitter post. “For some reason, funded largely by the United States, yet very China-centric. We will be giving that a good look. “Fortunately I rejected their advice on keeping our borders open to China early on. Why […]
If one was to sit down and draw up a list of things related to the Coronavirus for which somebody in Ireland should be arrested and prosecuted, there are a few things you might put on it. For starters, there was the decision to allow flights from Northern Italy to keep landing in the country […]
A few days ago on Twitter, our Editor here at Gript, John McGuirk questioned the level of training that was necessary for a HSE nurse to make a determination of death. It was a question that John asked in good faith-since most of us assume that such a determination should be straightforward. But since this […]
Two days ago the number of nursing homes with clusters of coronavirus infections in Ireland was 50. Within 24 hours that figure had doubled to 99 homes. This is very worrying news. A cluster is defined as “three or more COVID-19 cases in a single institution for a 72-hour period”. There are about 560 nursing […]
The governments Just Transition Strategy, with its clear priority on achieving the greatest levels of decarbonisation possible, is going to have a profound impact on Irish agriculture. We can take that as read. If implemented, it will also entirely reshape Ireland’s industrial landscape and, in particular the traditional industrial model that has revolved around Bord […]
My colleague, Tim Jackson, has written a really phenomenal piece this morning on the belated acquittal of Australian Cardinal, George Pell. You should read it all, but one line stood out: It’s well known that many clerics across the world committed the most heinous crimes against children in the mid-to-late 20th century, but the targeting, […]
Today’s verdict however is a vindication of Pell, one that any person who cherishes the right to a fair trial should welcome.
Amid the Coronavirus pandemic, palliative care specialist Dr Kathryn Mannix urges people to talk about dying; from her experience, most ‘very sick people’ – ‘[f]rom teenagers to pensioners’ – although mostly ‘afraid that their illness and death will cast a shadow over the people they love’ find themselves ‘utterly unable to discuss this worry with […]
I’m writing this on the evening of day six of our four week “lockdown” (as if we were in prison) in New Zealand. So far we have survived pretty well, something I put down to having jobs which have so far not been too disrupted by the shutting down of the entire country, and good […]