March, 2020

Garret Fitzgerald in his Memoirs, was rightly proud of his father, Desmond Fitzgerald’s role as Editor of THE IRISH BULLETIN when Minister for Publicity in the First Dail Eireann. The first Editor was Lawrence Ginnell TD, a barrister who had been a Westminster MP but had broken with John Redmond in 1910. Frank Gallagher was its […]

Neasa Hourican, TD, speaking for the Green Party, says that the Corona Virus Pandemic Crisis over-rides party-political priorities and that it will not prop up a Fine Gael -Fianna Fail Civil Partnership. But it would participate in a Unity or National Government involving all TDs while the crisis lasts.Some key Ministers appointed after the last-but-one […]

 What would you say might be fitting punishment for those people who, according to reports, deliberately coughed in the face of Simon Harris, the south’s Health Minister, or who cough and spit at gardaí?  Even in normal circumstances this would be mildly disgusting; in the present pandemic it shows a total disregard for anything or […]

Equality has just taken a giant leap forward in the south of Ireland. Or maybe two leaps. Because of the pandemic, all private hospitals have been taken over by the state. There were no ifs, buts, no let’s-talk-about-this. The government took them over. As things stand, all hospitals south of the border exist to serve […]

Since time immemorial men, and the women who loved them, have sworn by what they both held most dear. Gonads, in Latin “Testes” of which the singular is “Testis.” The word Testis, when law was in its infancy came to mean “Witness”. Ms Long as Stormont’s Minister for Justice must know that. Despite her party’s […]

The remote village of Cloghan on a back road between Ballybofey and Glenties in Co. Donegal doesn’t rate a listing on Google in regard to population, so at a wild guess I would think there might be 200 residents there; could be a lot less.  Anyway, last Thursday as fuel was running low I pulled […]

 ‘Is fearr an tsláinte ná na táinte’ – health is better than wealth, the Irish seanfhocal  tells us. That would seem so obvious, it’s a wonder we have to frame it in sayings like this. But it’s not obvious. Again and again we have to pull up short, ask ourselves if the effort we’re putting […]

What is it with middle-class unionists? Or at least with two prominent middle-class unionists? Recently Sinn Féin’s John O’Dowd tweeted about “a shire of bastards” in London (I’m pretty sure he meant “shower” but shire is good too) who were talking about “herd immunity” over the coronavirus, aka survival of the fittest. He was quickly […]

The Covid19 pandemic is an international emergency and our patterns of behaviour require radical adjustment. On the worrying side for many of us, has been the evident attitude of some,  mainly youthful groups,  that the situation is more inconvenience than crisis. For their part, they have been regularly assured by government and medical sources that […]

It’s getting a bit scary now. When you see the British prime minister looking as though he hadn’t slept for a week telling us that we must face the fact that a lot of loved ones will die before their time  – that’s scary. Normally Johnson would lob in a joke in Latin or maybe […]