The Irish Times says there were 700 people at it. RTÉ says there was 1000. Whichever is the case, there were a lot of people at the Sinn Féin meeting in the Rochestown Park Hotel, Cork, last night. From the brief clip I saw on TV, the crowd appeared, as the commentators sometimes say, “good-humoured”. […]
Tag Archives | Leo Varadkar
Gregory bares his teeth
The main hall in St Mary’s University College on the Falls Road was busting with people last night. Car parks front and rear filled, pavements bulging with illegally parked cars, people stacked like grain in a granary inside the hall, people bunched outside the hall in overflow. And two lecture theatres providing a video view […]
Pinning the Brits down, lifting mercury with a fork and related matters
So – with glacial speed, the British-Irish Intergovernmental Conference is to meet next month. There have been people – leaders of the SDLP and of Sinn Féin for a start – who have been urging that this should happen. The body was established so that matters of mutual interest to the two governments could be […]
Leo steps out and names the enemy
Some people will be pleased, some people will be nervous. But it’s safe to say that all Irish political parties – including the DUP, whose leader Arlene Foster is to visit Dublin today – are alert to the changes Leo Varadkar has said he will introduce as Taoiseach. Last month, he said that he was concerned […]
A tale of two health services
Once you begin to think about partition in terms of economics, all sorts of things jump up and demand attention. Let’s take one example. On 15 April this year, the south’s Health Minister Leo Varadkar visited Altnagelvin Hospital in Derry. After talking with the north’s then- Health Minister Jim Wells, Varadkar said: “Cross-border co-operation on health […]