What comes to mind in Ireland What is black? An absence of light, the cassocks of parish priests, dark peat in an Irish bog. What is brown? A leather belt, decaying plants, veins of iron in stones, the layered bark of a log. What is grey? Lowering clouds, skies threatening rain over windswept water, the … Read more
In 1977 Fianna Fáil Minister for Industry and Commerce, Desmond O’Malley, announced the government’s intention to build a nuclear power reactor at Carnsore Point, where the Irish Sea meets the southern Atlantic. Members of Cork Friends of the Earth, along with other groups and individuals, decided to oppose the idea. Four rallies by opponents of … Read more
Around Ireland and in its online expressions, there is vocal and colourful support for the cause of Palestine. Its flag is draped from windows, hung from gate posts and serves as WhatsApp profile pictures. PLO scarves are again in vogue, while watermelon t-shirts are worn when the weather allows, and charitable fund-raisers on behalf of … Read more
Terry Fagan is a renowned Irish local historian and storyteller from Dublin’s North Inner City. Born in the 1950s and raised in the historic heart of what was once Europe’s largest red-light district, the Monto, Fagan witnessed firsthand the rapid transformation, and often erasure, of the surrounding Dublin tenements and their culture. He is, to … Read more
It should be a source of embarrassment that in Ireland we still have had no public inquiry into the State’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite talk of terms of reference, nothing has materialized, and nor does this situation seem likely to change during the lifetime of new Taoiseach Harris’s government. The mainstream media, which … Read more
It’s Mother’s Day morning and I am on the brink. Desperate, determined, exhausted and certain all at once. I have passed an eternal night trying to push out a child, with no apparent progress. I don’t have a midwife gently coaching, or calling the ambulance, as the case may be. I am freebirthing. ‘Is that … Read more
Dublin was the second city of the British Empire until end of the eighteenth century. After the Act of Union of 1801, however, many prosperous land owners departed the city and, indeed, by the end of the nineteenth century Belfast’s population was greater. The former did, however, retain a residual aristocracy who formed the clientele … Read more
All persons and authorities within the state, whether public or private, should be bound by, and entitled to, the benefit of laws publicly and prospectively promulgated and publicly administered in the courts. Lord Bingham, ‘The Rule of Law‘, Sir David Williams Lecture, Cambridge, 2006. I have written extensively about the whittling away of due process … Read more
The colourful humourist and English poet laureate, Sir John Betjeman (1906-1984) is the subject of Dominic Moseley’s Betjeman in Ireland (Somerville Press, 2023), which is lavishly illustrated with photographs. Betjeman, who took his teddy bear, Alfie with him to Oxford in 1925 was the inspiration for the character of Sebastian Flyte in Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead … Read more
U.K. lawmakers, unlike their Irish counterparts, are currently agonising over the Online Safety Bill 2023. It is far less draconian than the recent Irish Bill, which I recently assessed. This is currently being reviewed in the House or Lords – a body not to be automatically dismissed. This archaic assembly is still capable of acting … Read more