Fr. Brendan has a deft turn of phrase to explain the matrix that is Irish Catholicism.
“Asylum seekers”, you might note, is not a phrase that ever appears these days, in most of the media. And it certainly does not appear in Government news releases. Instead, the new, PR-friendly term is “international protection applicants”. And said international protection applicants got good news yesterday, courtesy of Roderic O’Gorman and Simon Harris: Today, […]
Gript has spoken to a number of parents who say that their children were sent home from school yesterday after the parents failed to fill in a “back to school” form provided by the HSE which asked parents to certify that their children were free of infectious diseases. The form asks parents to declare that […]
Aontú Leader & Meath West TD Peadar Tóibín has called for the Government to enhance Covid-19 measures in Special Education Schools to facilitate these schools returning for the students who need them. He said that a survey of childcare professionals revealed that 74% of them saw regression in children with special needs during the lockdowns. After […]
“Some of you are waiting with baited breath, for that favourite media phrase, the u-turn”, drawled Margaret Thatcher to the Tory party conference, at the height of her first-term unpopularity. “Well, you turn if you want to. The lady’s not for turning”. The most prominent lady in the Irish Government, however, very much is for […]
It’s not hard to guess where the blame will fall for yesterday’s figures showing that, overwhelmingly, the wealthiest young people still dominate the most elite college places. As I remarked to Niamh when we were doling out the stories for today, “wealth finds a way”: Students from the wealthiest families continue to retain a firm […]
In Sweden, equality between the sexes has almost universal acceptance as a policy goal. To most outsiders, the term “gender mainstreaming” sounds like a policy of equality between the sexes — but with extra “umph”. This has also been the view of the Swedish government. What Ivar Arpi and Anna Karin Wyndhamn show in their […]
As we reported yesterday, Aontú leader Peadar Tóibín has introduced a bill to the Dáil which seeks to prevent the distribution of pornography to children by media companies, including internet service providers. It’s a worthy goal. Here he is, explaining it in more detail: Internet companies are providing hard core pornography to children as young […]
Our latest progressive reform only applies, it should be noted, to those schools which are fully under the control of the state. If your child attends a diocesan school, then he or she will still be able to learn in a classroom adorned with religious symbols, and will still have a graduation mass, and all […]
There’s a lot you can legitimately criticise Simon Harris for – and trust me, I do. But even a broken clock is right twice a day, and it was only a matter of time before even a politician like him surprised us all with a salient point. As reported in the Irish Times this morning: […]
Coronavirus running wild, economy sputtering to a halt, no-deal Brexit coming down the tracks, and, at last count, six thousand and seventy-seven homeless people in the country. And the Government’s hot new idea? Counting the skin colour of lecturers in Irish Universities to make sure they’re “diverse” enough: IT WILL BE compulsory for third-level institutions […]
On Saturday, the Association of Secondary Teachers of Ireland (ASTI) decided at a meeting of its national executive to ballot its members on strike action. Although part of this concerns the on-going and legitimate concern over the status and pay grades of some teachers, it is evident that the main issue is the re-opening of […]