Tuam is a by-product of the deeper scandal of a religious and social culture that seems so cruel, and yet so recent, to the modern world
One of the less edifying aspects of politics is the tendency of some practitioners to engage in the rhetoric of competitive moral outrage. The Tuam Mothers and Babies Home scandal is a case in point. The Oireachtas has heard in each House genuine and moving personal accounts from survivors of the Irish system of dealing […]
Brexit may not deliver a united Ireland soon, but it’s a challenge that should unite us all
One of the perennial problems in discussing the future of Northern Ireland is that the discussion of itself has a seriously polarising effect on the two main communities there. The underlying conflict of aspirations comes to the surface, however peacefully, and the process of normalising relations between those two communities is set back. On the […]
Real reconciliation with the orange in our tricolour must mean more than just indifference
When I wrote here last week about the spirit of the “Chuckle Brothers” being needed for a resolution of the impasse that has left Northern Ireland without a government and without a functioning assembly, I was not conscious that Martin McGuinness was about to join Ian Paisley in eternity, although I knew he was very […]
We need a realistic and honest debate on the type of Europe we aspire to now
The draft EU guidelines for negotiating Brexit are a welcome first offer in the process by which the departure of the UK from the European Union will be negotiated. It is, of course, a little artificial for a negotiating strategy to be developed in public and in the full gaze of the other party to […]
My trip across the invisible border provided a new perspective on North-South issues
On Friday I travelled to Belfast to unveil a plaque to commemorate Eoin Mac Néill’s birth 150 years ago this year and his lengthy residence as a secondary student and undergraduate at St Malachy’s College in Belfast from 1881 to 1887. When he arrived there, as John Mc Neill from Glenarm in Antrim at the […]
The peace process must now largely be seen as military capitulation disguised as a political transformation
In an intriguing recent radio discussion on BBC last week, John Ware, presenter of a Panorama programme on Stakeknife and Kieran Conway, a self-described former Provo intelligence officer and author of “Southside Provo”, discussed the significance of the now accepted belief that Fred Scappaticci was simultaneously a British spy and the IRA’s chief counter-intelligence interrogator, […]