Tánaiste Simon Harris has finally explained the case of Randi Gladstone, a Guyanese rapist with 19 previous convictions in the UK, who there entered Ireland and committed another rape in this country on an 18-year-old girl.
Harris’ explanation for how this happened was that Gladstone was from a country that has visa-free travel with Ireland, and ergo he was “not known to our immigration service”.
This raises some very significant questions, given that Ireland has visa-free travel with 49 countries, including Mexico, Brunei, and others.
Make no mistake – I will be looking into this case further and will report back what I find.
My exchange with Ruth Coppinger has now surpassed 1.1 million views on X alone and the response has been overwhelmingly negative towards her conduct.
I just find it amusing to think that in an alternate timeline, where she simply answered the question in a polite and reasonable manner, it would have received meagre views and nobody would be talking about it now.
I recently asked Gary Gannon of the Social Democrats a similar question, and he answered it calmly and civilly like a gentleman. Consequently, that video got just under 30k views and did not feature on anyone’s radar, because nothing sensational or mad happened in it. I asked, he answered, and we all went home.
By contrast, Coppinger created a viral moment for herself by being unreasonable. It’s almost like comporting yourself in an unprofessional and dismissive way when people ask you a fair question has a tendency to backfire.
Who knew?
As many people will have seen by now, Brendan McDonagh has walked away from the brand‑new Housing Activation Office after a storm of controversy over the proposed €430k pay packet. Fine Gael ministers say they were never asked to sign off on either the name or the eye‑watering salary, so they blocked it on principle. The Taoiseach now concedes the whole appointment was “not executed perfectly”, which is political speak for ‘it blew up in our faces’.
If Ministers can’t even hire someone for the role without a mortifying public climb‑down, what hope is there that the office will actually bulldoze planning logjams as intended? First impressions count, and this one doesn’t exactly scream competence. Very rough start all things considered.
– Ben
I’ll be honest: when I heard there was going to be an immigration protest in Dublin, part of me thought “What’s the point? Unless you can mobilise an absolutely huge crowd, nobody in the middle cares. These little protests don’t move the needle in any significant way.”
Turns out I was absolutely categorically wrong: the protest seems like it was genuinely massive. It might even be significant enough to put immigration back on the agenda for a while and remind politicians that it’s still an issue that loads of people care about. I obviously underestimated the magnitude of it, very impressive turnout.
The news that the Central Bank of Ireland somehow managed to spend €616,000 on a sculpture called A Double Rainbow – more than double their original estimated cost of €300,000 – should not come as a surprise. They were always going to buy something baffling. It was only a question of how much it would cost and how little it would mean. Turns out quite a lot and not very much, respectively.
The sculpture, which sits outside the office of the Central Bank inflicting itself upon the public, is, much like the internet, a series of tubes. 10.5 by 14 metres worth of brightly coloured tubing to be exact.
Add another €130,000 (plus VAT) they spent on a “functional art piece” which one could generously describe as a light fixture and you’ve got yourself about three-quarters of a million euro on just two pieces.
By contrast, a press release last week announced that Culture Ireland funding of over €900,000 was being allocated for the “promotion of Irish arts globally.” That funding supports 154 projects across, in their own words, “over 36 countries.” We assume they meant 37, that being the first number traditionally over 36. In any case, the point stands: the Central Bank spent almost as much on two immediately forgettable installations as Culture Ireland allocated to support the global visibility of Ireland’s entire cultural sector.
The figures are absurd, although not nearly as absurd as the fact that the pieces themselves provoke so little reaction. Not because people approve, but because the works themselves aren’t even memorable enough to dislike. A Double Rainbow is not good; it’s not even bad. It is so completely vapid that the eye barely registers its existence; it has all of the artistic impact of a test centre for learner drivers.
The offence isn’t in the object itself, it’s that this sort of object keeps being chosen. It is less art and more simply the end of a procurement process, and not a well calibrated one.
Look at the piece, if you can be bothered. Not from an angle designed by the architects. Just walk past, as any ordinary person might on the way to work. You will forget it before you turn the corner. It has no presence, no weight, no point. The “light fitting” is the same – neither beautiful nor functional in any way that justifies its price tag. These are line items that became objects.
So why, you might ask, was this sculpture created? Well, in the words of the Central Bank: “In line with planning requirements, the Central Bank agreed with Dublin City Council to commission an artwork for the public space directly outside the campus on North Wall Quay.”
The piece, according to the Central Bank, was intended to “benefit the local community, enhance the public realm of the Docklands and complement our existing Visitor Centre and participation in events such as Open House and Culture Night.”
It is perhaps telling that the Central Bank is able to talk about the art piece in extremely particular terms but shows no interest whatsoever in explaining what the point of the piece actually is, or why it was needed in the first place outside of the fact it was required for planning permission. Like much of modern Irish culture, the focus is entirely on the process, not the purpose beyond the idea that planning permission required it.
That’s it. Not to commemorate anything. Not to inspire anyone. Not to say anything about the institution, the city, or the country. Simply because the paperwork required it. A box was ticked. A contract was issued. A sculpture now exists.
We used to talk about public art being transcendental, inspiring, challenging even. Now we describe it using the same terms we apply to the construction of drainage systems.
Public art has become the worst kind of art: commissioned by people, usually working with committees of ‘independent art experts’, with limitless budgets of other people’s money and a vague, inherited belief that public spaces ought to include art, but no remaining sense of why that might be. Civic art once had a purpose. It existed to elevate the public: to honour a nation’s ideals; celebrate its heroes; express its spirit. Now that sort of thing is seen as ignorant, hopelessly out of touch with modern tastes, or, worst of all, unironically earnest.
Ireland has no shortage of artists capable of creating work that speaks to the nation, honors its traditions, or is simply beautiful – something we seem to have forgotten can actually be an objective when commissioning art. But they are not the ones being commissioned. Because there is a substantial difference between commissioning an artist and having the taste and discernment required to ensure that what you commissioned is actually something that deserves to exist.
The only possible argument for the artistic worth of these pieces is if the Central Bank deliberately attempted to commission multiple works whose only memorable feature is their price tag as some sort of commentary on finance. And even that argument is undercut by the fact that they apparently couldn’t even get the price right; it is reported that part of the additional spend arose because the Central Bank didn’t realise VAT would apply to certain UK invoices. Which is to say that the institution that regulates financial services, oversees national economic policy, and is empowered to set rules for banks…did not understand, and did not care to find out, how VAT works.
All that remains is budget line-items and contract compliance. The best we can hope for is that whatever pile of brightly coloured tubing gets thrown up next follows in the footsteps of A Double Rainbow and bears the deeply redeeming feature that it’s utterly forgettable.
Something I’m increasingly noticing since looking into the NGO sector lately is just how interconnected everyone is. You keep hearing the same names come up again and again working for seemingly different organisations, and you’ll look up the address of one NGO, and find the address is the same as another one, operating out of the same building. Would love to chart the connections between them all in a web-like chart to show just how linked in they are.
– Ben
I couldn’t agree more with Maria’s take below, but also, just to add to it by saying that it’s clear from all of the official data that people with children are happier and more fulfilled long-term than those without. So it’s not even a trade-off where having kids will make you miserable, but it’s “the right thing to do” so you should just get on with it – it’s literally a key to happiness itself.
– Ben
I’ve been interested in the conversation around pop star Chappell Roan’s comments on motherhood. The 27-year-old singer caused a bit of a stir online last week when she said on the Call Her Daddy podcast: “All of my friends who have kids are in hell. I actually don’t know anyone who is like…happy and has children.”
I’m 28. I’m not married and I don’t have any children yet. I think there is a societal fear of having children for a lot of women my age. Yes, it’s harder to find a partner these days, I think because of things like a gap in people’s values, and also the way in which we socialise less since Covid – but there also seems to be more of a fear of having children at the age where we should ideally be having them.
I would love to hear the reader’s opinions, especially those who are parents – I don’t think happiness per say is the reason anyone goes into motherhood. It’s for things like long-term fulfilment and it’s a biological instinct many women have. Have we created a society so focused on short-term happiness that young women are afraid of pursuing a life which brings some suffering, but a deeper happiness in the long-term?
-Maria
I have an article coming shortly about the amount we’ve spent on various sectors over the last decade or so, and how much our spending has increased in fields that are absolute shambles still (e.g. housing, health, etc.). Even as someone who follows this stuff for a living, it’s shocking to me. Look forward to seeing people’s reactions when I have this posted.
On email, regarding my piece this morning on the weekend’s opinion poll:
“John,
I don’t know how you can trust any opinion polling in Ireland after the disastrous record of polling in last year’s referendums. Everyone knows polling is about narrative-setting, not data collection”
Well, two things: First, you can’t have it both ways. You know all those times we write articles about how 73% or whatever it is of Irish people think immigration is too high? Those numbers come from opinion polls. If polling is just narrative setting, why would you believe that number either, and why wouldn’t the polling companies just massage the numbers to make that “7% of Irish people think immigration is too high”?
Indeed, this poll also has – as my piece mentions – lots of bad news for the Government. More people oppose them than are willing to vote against them, which suggests that the Government is being propped up by weak opposition.
Second, the referendum polling really wasn’t that bad. In fact, without bragging, I wrote a piece two weeks before the vote saying that the opinion polls were actually pointing heavily in the direction of a double “no” vote. You can read that piece here, to refresh your memory.