Walking though the centre of Dublin last Friday, fans of Taylor Swift were much in evidence hours before the first of her three concerts in the Aviva stadium even started. They were mostly teenage girls, sometimes with their mothers along for the experience. A lot of the fans (both the teenagers and their mothers) were…
The British General Election will take place on July 4. Labour is expected not only to win but may achieve the biggest majority ever seen in the House of Commons. The Conservatives, in power without interruption since 2011, are in for an almighty hammering. Since the last General Election in 2019, when the Tories won…
A major revision of the primary school curriculum is underway, one that will affect how the half a million children currently in our primary schools will be taught and all future children for years to come. It is a matter of great importance, but it has barely come to public or political attention at all.…
We are not at all as European as we think. For all the talk of ‘being Europeans’ (which we clearly are), almost everyone identifies with and relates to their own country first. It is the same across the rest of Europe and next door in Britain as well. This is why we know much more…
How are our teenagers faring, and more specifically, what about our 13-year-olds? This is the question examined by a new report from the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) called ‘The Changing Social Worlds of 13-Year-Olds’. Here is the short version: compared with 13-year-olds ten a decade ago, today’s 13-year-olds get on a bit better…
Does anti-Semitism exist in Ireland and how widespread is it? How do you even define the term? Ever since the brutal war in Gaza began last year, following the Hamas atrocities inside Israel, criticism of Israel in this country and elsewhere has intensified. The criticisms are so strong, that many Jews are saying it is…
It is not that long since divorce was not permitted in Ireland at all. The State followed the view of the Catholic Church that marriage should be permanent and indissoluble. This was a country with an overwhelmingly Catholic population, and so when a referendum to make divorce legal was first put to the country in…
The first thing to be noticed about the survey is the relatively high number of people who said they are going to church once a week or more. It comes in at almost one in four people. The reason that is a surprise is because other polls in recent times have indicated that the number…
Immigration and asylum-seeking continue to be two of the biggest issues now that concern Irish voters. They are not far below housing. At the last election in early 2020 they barely featured at all. But perhaps that is because in 2019, the relatively small number of 4,781 people claimed asylum here, compared with over 13,000…
The Church must speak up for rights society is happy to ignore, writes David Quinn The late Cardinal Joseph Bernardin, who was the archbishop of Chicago, used to advocate an approach to Catholic social justice teaching that become known as ‘the seamless garment’. The idea behind it was that all social justice teachings belonged together…