In case you missed it, last week saw Europol, which is the European Union’s Agency for Law Enforcement publish its EU Terrorism Situation & Trend Report for 2019. One of the most startling, but perhaps not entirely surprising pieces of data to emerge from the Report was the fact that in 2019 a total of […]
Parents of 670 teenage students with Down syndrome have won a battle to ensure they can be enrolled in a summer education programme for children with special needs. Draft guidelines published by the Department of Education last month indicated that the students would not be eligible for the summer tuition, causing much distress to parents and […]
The current debate over the extent of Irish “white privilege” and indeed responsibility for slavery has led to the revival of what has sometimes been an unseemly debate over whether the transportation of Irish people to the West Indies during the Cromwellian plantation constituted a form of slavery. Much of the debate over such matters […]
170 Irish soldiers previously stationed in Lebanon returned home today after a delay of several months due to the covid-19 pandemic. Though originally due home in May, the men’s return was delayed following a decision by the UN secretary general, Antonio Guterres, who banned UN peacekeepers from returning, supposedly to prevent the spread of covid-19. […]
A member of the Together for Yes campaign which worked to repeal the 8th amendment has been criticised for saying that the 6,666 abortions that took place in Ireland in 2019 were “6,666 small victories”. Bernie Linnane, a spokesperson for Leitrim Together for yes, yesterday posted that ‘repealers’ should be ‘celebrating’ the number of abortions which took place, […]
A recent media item reported on a €20 million investment in social housing through the iCare charity which says that it will potentially cover the costs of building 165 homes. The money was sourced from 52 Chinese business people who are seeking to obtain Irish visas through the Immigrant Investor Programme. The programme allows non […]
6,666 babies had their lives ended by abortion in the first year of the abortion legislation introduced for 2019 by Simon Harris, new figures released today show. Pro-life advocates said the numbers were “horrific” and showed a huge increase in the number of abortions taking place on Irish women. In the twelve months to December […]
We already knew or should have known that we have the worst form of government ‘except for all the alternatives that have ever been tried’, as Winston Churchill put it. Sometimes it works better than other times. Sometimes, it is not the concept itself that is found wanting but the manner of its application. But […]
With Carrigaline stabbings, Gardaí being shot dead, and people being killed in their own homes with samurai swords, it’s becoming increasingly clear that Ireland’s leaders are not ready for the rising crime wave. Ben Scallan comments. #gript
Marriage continues to change and decline in Ireland as the latest figures from the Central Statistics Office show. Fewer marriages are taking place, fewer are taking place in churches, more are taking place between people who were married before and are now divorced, and couples are older when they marry. Same-sex marriage is now permitted. In 2019, […]
The global soul-searching over the issue of racism, contemporary and historic, that has taken place since the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis on 25 May has not escaped Ireland. It has taken many forms, some instructive, others less so. One of the most commented-on has been an investigation of the ways in which the […]
If you happen to be a disinterested observer of Ireland’s decades-long abortion debate, you could be forgiven for thinking that things unfolded something like this. First, Catholic Ireland implemented the oppressive 8th Amendment, designed to inflict moral dogmas on a helpless population. Then, despite many horrifying happenings in between, the last vanguard of the patriarchy […]