Recently, I got on a crowded Luas and sat down, delighted to find an empty seat. I then glanced at the other side of the carriage. My heart sank. I saw immediately why the seat had been free. There were two tough-looking individuals with their feet up on the seats. Both had that malnourished look…
The fact that RTÉ concealed additional payments to broadcaster, Ryan Tubridy, to the tune of €345,000 will undermine confidence still further in the public service broadcaster. In a disturbing article in the Sunday Independent, an anonymous whistleblower claims that Mr Tubridy’s salary is just the tip of the iceberg. Apparently, it is a dirty little…
It is great news that every primary school in Greystones has signed up for a ban on smartphones. It is a significant gesture when everyone is wringing their hands about the impact of smartphones but few are doing anything about it. It is not enough, however. There need to be familial, local, national and international…
In barrister Marie O’Shea’s independent review of the abortion legislation, abortion is taken as an unqualified good. Therefore, anything standing in the way has to be removed. The three-day waiting period is framed as dispensable. And yet the review acknowledges elsewhere in a section on consent, that “there are risks that women may regret their…
Things we do every year are familiar, comforting and sometimes, numbing. Lent, Holy Week and Easter are supposed to remind us of the central, astonishing truth of Christianity – God loved us so much that he died for us. Even more astonishing, he then ended the dominion of death by rising. This ought to be…
It was great to see the plight of Nicaraguan Bishop Rolando Álvarez brought to public attention by The Irish Catholic recently. The story arose from a parliamentary question posed by Carol Nolan, TD. Deputy Nolan does sterling work drawing attention to unpopular causes, along with many of her fellow Independent and minority party TDs. Nonetheless,…
Our new public holiday created to commemorate Imbolc/St Brigid has come and gone. In Leo Varadkar’s announcement last January, the emphasis was already clear. “This will be the first Irish public holiday named after a woman. It marks the half-way point between the winter solstice and the equinox, the beginning of spring and the Celtic…
In the middle of head-wrecking controversies it’s welcome to come across a programme that front-loads positivity. The Leap of Faith (RTE, Friday) was well timed as the COP27 Climate Change Conference was drawing to a close. It was good to hear positivity and optimism in a new book The Parish as Oasis: An Introduction to…
The View The internet can be dark, distracting place but sometimes those clicks can lead us to a place of grace. Recently, I stumbled across the online columns of Warren Harbeck, who writes for the Cochrane Eagle weekly newspaper in Alberta, Canada. His mood chimed with mine. Harbeck was troubled by the war in Ukraine,…
The View It’s the media’s job to report bad news about the Church. For decades, they were too deferential. They should continue to highlight the truth about the Church, particularly the unpleasant truths. Yet it is not unreasonable to wish for some balance. It would be pleasant to occasionally see a good news story about people…