A bid by the Democratic Unionist Party in the north to outlaw abortions on the grounds of disability has gained support and put pressure on Sinn Féin to support a change in the law to protect some people with disabilities. Abortion legislation, imposed on the region by the British Parliament in Westminster has remained enormously controversial ever since […]
Last weekend’s interview with Mary Lou McDonald by Hugh O’Connell attracted a lot of attention because McDonald had told him that she might well have joined the IRA. Of course she did not, choosing instead to join Fianna Fáil while in college, and only joining Sinn Féin in 2002. She was elected to the European […]
There are probably two things one might say about Mary Lou McDonald’s claim to the Sunday Independent that given the chance, she’d have been in the IRA, armed to the teeth and taking potshots at lads from Bolton who were unlucky enough to get posted to Northern Ireland. If you’re the anti-SF type, there’s the […]
While US President Trump threatens to pull the US pharma industry out of Ireland, tanking the economy, Leo Varadkar thinks it’s a good time to needlessly insult him. Ben Scallan comments. #gript
The Green Party is a remarkably patrician outfit. Its elected representatives are invariably academics, lawyers or involved in “clean” enterprise. That is reflected in fact that their youth wing is almost exclusively based in the four main universities. The Young Greens, albeit with just one rep on the National Executive, will nonetheless play a key role […]
An Irish Examiner story, for the record, not one of ours. We have higher standards, you see. Anyway, here’s what they wrote. It went super-viral online, as you might expect: “A number of TDs have raised the question of new allowances to allow them to purchase office equipment while they work from home during the […]
Pop quiz: Who said this, on January 23rd? Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin has said his party will not form a “grand coalition” with Fine Gael after the general election. Mr Martin said his party was only interested in creating a new government with other “centre” parties such as Labour and the Greens. Asked if […]
An interesting report in the Examiner the other day that, with all the Coronavirus news, got a little bit overlooked. But it’s genuinely surprising that it’s taken this long for something like this to be floated: A number of Fine Gael ministers do not believe a government can be formed and that a second general […]
What kind of mentality observes the global lockdown and horrifying death toll from the Coronavirus and acts as if the real problem is that there might not be enough abortions? At a time when heroic men and women on the frontline are making enormous sacrifices to save lives, abortion supporters are fretting that COVID-19 might be preventing […]
Attempts by Sinn Féin and left-wing TDs such as Bríd Smith to include amendments to the Emergency Measures legalisation which would allow abortion pills to be taken without a face-to-face consultation have been slammed as the “worst kind of opportunism” by the Life Institute. “While the rest of the country battles to save lives in the […]
The bravery of Sinn Fein Senator Maire Devine shouldn’t be under-estimated here. She could easily have simply self-isolated with her family and watched the crisis evolve around her. Nobody’s going to blame anybody who just stays at home, watches Netflix, and does their part by social distancing. That is, after all, the whole point of […]
Sinn Féin’s spectacular and unforeseen triumph in the general election has brought new focus on the party and the way in which it is run. That has intensified as post-election polls would seem to point to an even better result in the event of coalition talks failing and a new election being called. All this […]