Editor’s Note: Having previously published Vaccination: A Matter of Trust with Caveats, we now anticipate objections from some readers to an article that may provoke vaccine hesitancy, at a point when rapid rollout to the entire adult population is widely touted as the only path out of interminable lockdowns. The author of this article, Dr. … Read more
In August of last year I wrote an article pointing to the impending consequence of the Irish government’s rolling lockdown policy, ‘The Perfect Storm’[i] gathering on the horizon over the country. By that I meant a significant second wave of Covid-19 – to hit this winter. I made that prediction based on the following factors: … Read more
People shouldn’t look at the balance sheet all of the time they should think of the future. Cyril Collins 2016 A friend sent a video link to me recently about a community-based project that took place in Ballina in County Mayo. The community turn a wasteland into a forest and then, over time and slow … Read more
The three mantra for this pandemic in Ireland are: wash your hands; socially distance; and wear a mask. Stated repetitively with suitable gravitas the guidelines have been internalised by most of the population. Fears around the spread of the ‘deadly’ virus are even driving people to police one another. The valley of the squinting windows … Read more
Mere colour, unspoiled by meaning, and unallied with definite form, can speak to the soul in a thousand different ways. Oscar Wilde One of the most dramatic dives I have ever completed was the awesome Fastnet lighthouse off the west Cork coastline. As a young diver of barely sixteen I was on a dive trip … Read more
I am a father, a husband, a son, a friend, a doctor, an athlete, a traveller, a student and a citizen. Although just one person, I nonetheless occupy many nodes in the complex networks that make up society. These extend into the past, traverse the present and reach towards the future. Over the past few … Read more
it is difficult enough for the fishermen to make a living but because of inaction with seal culls, they are now suffering very seriously … What is needed is to dramatically reduce the amount of seals in our water in the same way as we have to reduce our deer population … There is no … Read more
In his first article Dan Mc Auley revealed some of the hidden secrets below Dublin Bay, and a looming threat to that environment. In this article Dan takes us to the mysterious world of shipwrecks around the Irish coastline, of which there are a remarkable 18,000, two of which he has been taking photographs of … Read more
No facts without Judgment Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of any service to them. Mr Gradgrind from Charles Dickens’s Hard Times (1854). These are facts the heart can feel; yet … Read more
Jacques Cousteau, the inventor of the aqua-lung which finally allowed human beings to roam freely under water once said: ‘The sea, once it casts its spell, holds one in its net of wonder forever.’ Like many other kids growing up in Dublin, I first learned to swim in the two-hundred-year old man-made harbour of Sandycove. … Read more