As I write this, my Fianna Fáil colleagues in the Seanad are bringing forward a motion to debate Online Safety. I don’t doubt their good intentions, but the text of their motion is too deferential towards the Government, the EU and Big Tech. Artificial Intelligence is reshaping our world, they say, and the Government has…

On this week’s Education Nation podcast, we turned our attention to one of the pinch points of our education system, perhaps the most pressurised and least understood roles in Irish education: school leadership. More specifically, the conversation focused on the lived reality of principals and deputy principals in post-primary schools. Our guest, Rachel O’Connor, a…

The Edict of Milan, issued in February 313 by Constantine the Great and Licinius, stands as one of the most decisive turning points in Christian history. By granting religious tolerance throughout the Roman Empire and restoring confiscated Christian property, the edict transformed Christianity from a persecuted minority faith into a legally recognised religion. Its impact…

Thirty years ago, as a postgraduate student completing my master’s degree in education, I was invited to choose an area of ‘comparative education’ to research. It was not a decision to take lightly since the essay would form a significant part of my overall assessment profile. I was 22 years old, a newly qualified teacher,…

After the defeat of their extreme abortion proposal just before Christmas that would have allowed abortion on request up-to-birth, Ruth Coppinger and Paul Murphy barely paused for a breath before returning with another bill, this time focused on removing the life-saving three-day wait before an abortion takes place. The abortion law requires that a period…

Experience, wrote CS Lewis, is a brutal teacher. And former politician Peter Mandelson, who has been disgraced over his ties to notorious sex offender and human trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, once taught me a lesson. We were both attending one of those awful receptions for “the great and the good”. I was there as a BBC…

A disobedient child used to be called ‘bold’ in Ireland, ‘naughty’ in Britain and ‘méchant’ – which can also mean ‘bad’ or ‘nasty’ – in France. Occasionally, the more forgiving term ‘contrary’ might be applied. And bold children were slapped for their wilfulness or sent out of the classroom to be given a humiliating scolding.…

Movies, documentaries and books can leave an indelible impression on the mind. When they deal with historical subjects, and especially when they deliberately play on the emotions of their audiences, they can give people a highly distorted view of the subject under examination. For example, if you went along to see the movie Small Things…

It wasn’t when Vandalising Ireland hit No.1 on Amazon Ireland and in the National Book Charts that I realised that something special was happening, even though for the book to achieve that milestone based on word-of-mouth alone is almost unheard of. Rather, it was when people began posting images of their orders from all around…