A Failed Border Poll Is Worse Than Futile
British prime minister Andy Burnham caused a flap when he said holding a poll on Irish unity was “off the table”. To some, his words seemed categorical, dismissive and at variance with the Belfast Agreement, which provides for a poll on Irish unity to ascertain the wishes of a majority of the people of Northern Ireland. It obliges the […]
Ireland is hopelessly undefended and radical review is required
One lesson we can learn from the war in Ukraine is that warfare itself is constantly evolving. When Putin’s invasion started we witnessed his armoured columns driving towards Kyiv and ending in smouldering ruins. Presumably Putin envisaged his tanks rolling into Kyiv utterly unscathed, just as Soviet tanks rolled in to Dubcek’s Prague in 1968 […]
Political violence was the decisive factor in the creation of the Irish Free State
History is necessarily retrospective. Politics is prospective. Good history is concerned with truth. Bad history tries to use a particular version of events for contemporary political purposes. Of course, history is inevitably written and understood from a contemporary perspective. But good historians know that and attempt to carry out their craft in that awareness. One […]
Will Trump call to the Áras for an icy courtesy visit with Catherine Connolly?
It is almost impossible to follow, let alone describe, American foreign policy. The armed conflict with Iran which Donald Trump, for legal reasons, refuses to describe as a war, even though his self-styled secretary for war is nominally in charge, has become ridiculous. With numerous claims of victory, equally numerous claims that the Iranians are desperate to negotiate, […]
If 166 brothels can operate openly in Ireland, the ban on paying for sex is not working
Gardaí visited 166 brothels and interviewed more than 250 people described as “sex workers” as part of an international crackdown on sex trafficking, according to a recent report in The Irish Times. The report quoted gardaí as stating that they had detected no victims of sex trafficking during the operation. But they nonetheless appealed for anyone with relevant […]
MetroLink: Are we are setting in motion another financial runaway train?
We still have no clarity as to what Minister for Transport Darragh O’Brien meant when he informed media that the 19km MetroLink project (12km to 14km underground) might now be built in two phases, the first of which would run from Swords to an unidentified point in the city centre. There has been media speculation that the two-phased approach […]