December, 2017

The North’s relationship with the South of Ireland has always been a tricky one. For decades the southern part of Ireland was ignored by the six-counties state – they were a priest-ridden, bog-poor lot who censored their own writers and enjoyed listening to diddly-dee music and old men with no teeth singing tuneless dirges. Then […]

A: Sometimes we don’t know how lucky we are. B: Lucky? What’s lucky about a world where Trump is in charge in the US and James Brokenshire is in charge here? A: I expect you’ve heard about all the thousands of British government files which have vanished into thin air? There one minute then pouf! […]

The last priest’s funeral I was at was for my cousin Canon Eugene Dolan. In addition to a moving eulogy by his brother Monsignor Andy Dolan, there was a man from St Edward’s parish in Salford, near Manchester in England, where Eugene had been stationed for the previous forty-seven years. This man talked about the […]

As we prepare ourselves for the annual bout of over-eating and drinking, set in the warmth of our families in most cases. the book I find myself reading provides a stark contrast. Its title is is Ireland’s Hunger for Justice and is published by the Tomás Ághas Centenary Memorial Committee, in Kerry. It’s a meticulous […]

Pics 1 + 2 are by moi (Jude)   Pic 1   Pic 2                Pic 1 shows my grandson Jude and his father Patrick inspecting  a Big Fish in La Rochelle Pic 2  shows my friend Dessie Donnelly with an ardent admirer…

There’s a very sensible arrangement known in the commercial world as the “cooling-off period”. In 2011, for example, the EU produced a Consumer Rights Directive that makes it mandatory for member states to give people the right to return goods purchased  – anything from two weeks to a year, depending on how well the purchaser […]

Almost forty years ago, when I returned to Ireland from Canada in 1979, some Canadians I knew were open-mouthed in astonishment: they’d always known I was stupid but not this stupid. Lord Mountbatten had just been killed in an explosion on his boat off the Donegal coast, eighteen British soldiers had been killed at Narrow […]

The cross-party Oireachtas committee in Dublin has recommended that abortion up to twelve weeks be made available to any woman who asks for one. The debate leading up to the repeal of the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution, which would be necessary to make the Oireachtas committee’s recommendation law, will generate a great deal of […]

Very often what a person says reveals more about them than the topic they’re addressing. For example, I once said on a radio programme that the Orange Order was an anti-Catholic organization. The Rev John Dulop, who was on the programme with me, commented that such a remark said more about me than the Orange […]