Ireland will hold the presidency of the EU from the middle of this year until the end. The presidency is held by EU member-states on a rotating basis for six months at a time each. When the EU was smaller, we got to hold the presidency much more regularly. But with 27 members, we only…

Anti-Semitism is on the rise. It is hard to believe that within living memory of the Holocaust this should be happening, but it is. The latest and most extreme example in a Western country in the last few years took place on Bondi Beach in Sydney, Australia, shortly before Christmas, when 15 Jewish people were…

Why do people leave religion? What happens to them afterwards? Why do people switch from one religion to another, and what happens after that? These are the main questions posed by a major new survey in Britain that polled almost 3,000 people who have either left religion or joined a new one in their lifetime.…

When I was growing up, there was nothing I wanted each Christmas more than a toy robot. Those were the days of TV shows like Lost in Space in which ‘Robby the Robot’ featured. Every little boy wanted a robot of his own. In would go the batteries, the thing would make some noise, walk…

Shortly after the recent presidential election, Tánaiste Simon Harris said something a bit surprising. He told reporters: “Immigration is too high”. His statement was not surprising because he said immigration is high, it is and that’s a fact.  What was surprising was that he said it at all. Immediately and predictably he was compared with…

And so the long-running saga that is called ‘Donald Trump’ continues, but this time with three big defeats in elections that took place in America last week. These were for the governorships of Virginia and New Jersey and the mayoralty of New York City. In Virginia, a Republican governor was defeated, while in New Jersey…

Mary ‘May’ McGee died last week at the age of 81. She earned a significant place in Irish social and legal history in 1973 when the Supreme Court ruled that the decision whether or not to use contraception was a private matter between husband and wife and the State had no right to interfere with…

There is a sense in which anyone of a certain age is a product of Catholic Ireland, including those who react against it, but some are more formed by it than others. You can just see the indelible impression Catholic Ireland has left on them, and one such person in my opinion, is our president-elect,…

Northern Ireland can no longer be viewed as consisting of two groups, religiously speaking, namely the Catholic and the Protestants. What must also be added into the mix are the non-religious, who are growing in number. This is one of the main findings of a major new poll on attitudes to religion in the North.…