Easy to miss the distinction here, but it’s there, all right. He’s not praying “for the people of Europe”, or even, “to grant wisdom to European leaders”, or anything like that. He’s praying for “the unity of the European Union”. On the feast of St. Catherine of Siena, Doctor of the Church and Patroness of […]
An interesting little addendum to the story this morning about Ireland being the tenth worst country in the world for Coronavirus deaths per million people: All of the ten countries that head that list, Ireland, and the nine worse than us, are in the European Union. You have to get to 11th on the list, […]
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 […]
There’s a sense in the country, and in the wider world, at the moment, that this is the time for everyone to pull together, and that old divisions don’t really matter in the face of a genuinely existential threat to human life. In so far as possible, therefore, we’ve tried not to dole out any […]
An interesting email into us yesterday from Hermann Kelly, leader of the Irish Freedom Party, raised the question of why the Taoiseach and the Government appear to be persistently providing false information about the amount of money the Government sends to the EU annually. Speaking in Trinity College last week, the Taoiseach gave his usual […]
The European Parliament called for the legalisation of abortion in Ireland. The opinion, passed in Strasbourg by 321 votes to 122; it carried no legislative weight but provoked a storm of political controversy. It was not the first and wouldn’t be the last time institutions within the European Union would admonish Ireland for it’s pro-life […]
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 […]
Stockholm Syndrome. It is the psychological description of a state in which a captive comes to identify with their captor. On the day on which our nearest neighbour has formally departed the European Union, perhaps it is apt to reflect on this state’s relationship to that entity. There are many factors influencing the reaction of […]
The European Commission (the executive branch of the EU) for the next five years has recently taken office under the Presidency of Ursula von der Leyen. The 27 members of the Commission (one from each member state – the departing UK has not named a commissioner) form a cabinet government and together they propose legislation, […]
Tomorrow on TG 4 (Wednesday, Jan 8th), viewers of Irish Television, will get a rare opportunity to see a documentary that gives an honest assessment of our nation’s fishing industry. Little attention is ever given to the fact that our fisheries is our greatest natural resource. Since 1975, foreign boats netted over €240 Billion worth […]
The Journal.ie reports this morning that there appears to be no end in sight to Ireland’s newly declared direct provision wars: THE GOVERNMENT IS looking at housing thousands of asylum seekers in new Direct Provision centres in the coming years. The numbers of people arriving to seek international protection in the state has risen 50% […]
To cut a long story short, the banks are charging people hundreds of thousands of euros more than they should be. Shawn Pogatchnik has the scoop: “Banks are hitting many mortgage holders with double the interest rate they need to be profitable, the Central Bank has warned in a stinging rebuke to lenders’ claims of […]