It’s a bit of a risk writing a column for a newspaper that comes out on a Thursday and assuming the General Election will have been called by the time you read it. But all the predictions are that Ireland will have its General Election on Friday, November 29, and Taoiseach Simon Harris will have…
The phrase “Ireland’s dark past” has well and truly entered the national consciousness. We come across it in articles, hear it on the radio, in TV documentaries, in movies and in general conversation. Our “dark past” used to refer mainly to the period from the foundation of the Irish State in 1922 until maybe the…
With a General Election coming up, various issues will come to the front of the public mind and one of them is bound to be immigration. It has been arguably the main topic of debate in the country for the last year or so and therefore it is fitting that the bishops have produced a…
Last week you may have been very impressed to see on the news footage of walking, talking, humanoid-type robots of the sort portrayed in science fiction movies down the years. The robots spoke with humans in a human-like way, carried out tasks like folding clothes, and even danced. The robots have been produced by a…
Could there be straws in the wind of a mini-religious revival underway, not so much here in Ireland (yet), but in countries like the United States? Recent data seem to show that among young American men in particular there has been a small uptick in the numbers regularly attending church services. Some opinion polls can…
How strong an affinity is there between Ireland and the Jewish people? I would say, little enough. As a country we do not have a history of warm relations with them. We have never had a strong Jewish presence in the country. In World War 2 we did not take in many Jewish refugees (mind…
These days, Catholics are reduced to voting for the lesser of two evils in elections. It is the case in Ireland, for the most part, and certainly in the United States. Here in Ireland, there are small parties and individual candidates you can vote for with a clear conscience, but is there any plausible government…
There has been something of a hue and cry about a textbook for use in Social Personal and Health Education (SPHE) class in secondary schools. The textbook in question shows an extremely unflattering caricature of an Irish family and then compares it with a much nicer, more diverse and open-minded family and it is no…
From time to time, in my capacity as head of The Iona Institute, I commission an opinion poll on some topic or another. When I do so, I am always aware that asking questions in a certain way is more likely to result in a certain outcome. That is why I often base the questions…
In many parts of the country there is a shortage of GPs. Therefore, it is not just the priesthood that is suffering from a shortage of vocations. Figures last week from the Irish Medical Council showed the scale of the problem. The worst hit county is Meath, which has only 54 doctors per 100,000 people.…