A few short days ago, the nation’s gallant Minister for Health strode purposely out of a meeting with his officials, sleeves rolled up, frown artfully affixed to his forehead, and announced to the waiting public that he had a plan to prevent the spread of the Coronavirus: He was going to cancel a rugby match. […]
I had a quick look through Hansard and discovered that I first started speaking on this subject 20 years ago in a debate on the persecution of Christians in Egypt. Frankly, there was little interest from the Government then, but we see much more attention now, which I welcome. There is a special envoy for […]
With the Labour Leadership contest underway, and the country slowly coming apart without a government, it’s time to bring back what is undoubtedly one of the greatest achievements of Irish politics – the Alan Kelly election rap. The rap was produced by GMC Beats in Cork for the 2009 election, which saw Alan Kelly […]
Recent reports indicate Fine Gael thinks it has hit rock bottom and a second election can not possibly hit it any harder than the first. That’s unlikely to be the case. A large number of people in Fine Gael seem to believe that the exit polling shows that their campaign in the last week to […]
Before you get all outraged about the new report from the Central Statistics Office declaring Ireland the second most expensive country in Europe, take a minute and reflect that it’s probably not that surprising: Irish consumers pay the second highest prices in Europe, according to new figures from the Central Statistics Office. The country also […]
Despite the heated exchanges between Mary Lou McDonald and Micheál Martin in the Dáíl, one of the more likely Sinn Féin TDs to get a ministerial car if they are successful in inveigling their way into power is Chris Andrews, a scion of one of the founding families of Fianna Fáil. Andrews left Fianna Fáil […]
In September, in a case known as Truchon v Canada, Quebec Superior Court Justice Christine Baudouin declared parts of both the federal and provincial laws on Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) unconstitutional. Her judgement struck down the requirement in Canada’s euthanasia laws that death be reasonably foreseeable before euthanasia could take place. On Monday, the Canadian […]
On Saturday, more than three weeks will have passed since the General Election, and Ireland still has no obvious Government in sight. It is now expected that the next attempt by the Dáil to elect a new Taoiseach may not take place until the end of March. Yesterday, Aontú leader Peadar Tóibín noted the somewhat […]
Two Harley Street doctors have been suspended ‘after mistakenly removing the vagina of a transgender patient without consent’; in what is thought to be a legal first in Britain, the case involved a ‘man, who was transitioning from a woman’, who was left “distraught” after the irreversible gender reassignment procedure’; the anonymous patient ‘had agreed […]
I am wondering what to do with my copy of a 2003 photograph of Mary Lou McDonald standing next to the statue of Nazi collaborator Sean Russell in Fairview Park. The picture has possibilities. Not that either Fine Gael or Fianna Fail had the wit to grasp the possibilities during the election. But I have […]
One-time New York mayor Michael Bloomberg’s bid for Democrat leader has suffered a setback as a female former employee claimed she had signed a non-disclosure agreement after the billionaire media mogul ‘responded to news of her pregnancy by saying “kill it”’; Sekiko Sekai Garrison, 55, ‘also accused Mr Bloomberg of saying “Great! Number 16!”’ – […]
Between 5pm and midnight this evening, while you were enjoying your pancakes, two flights arrived at Dublin Airport from Milan, Italy. A third arrived from the southern Italian city of Bari. A commercial flight usually carries between 150-200 passengers. In other words, about 450 people arrived into Ireland from a country where thousands of people […]