Category Archives: Ireland

Safe and Legal in Ireland

The issue of abortion is in the news [registration cheat] today. George explains further on Slugger where quite a heavy discussion is ongoing. I’m not brave enough to get involved just yet, maybe later.

Dead newborn found in skip

Help me understand exactly how this works … yesterday the body of a newborn baby was found in a skip in Limerick. Gardaí naturally are appealing for the mother to come forward. What troubles me is the line in this report “no evidence of foul play”. Surely being left to die (i’m making the huge [...]

Sand bullets for riot control

The Israeli military will in future use sand bullets for riot control, replacing rubber bullets which have been responsible for dozens of deaths. Perhaps the PSNI might consider a similar move. Although rubber bullets are not used much anymore in NI [they were used quite recently but that was the first time in about 3 [...]

Holding The Fort

I was looking for some comedy sketches when I cam across this, thought it was worth posting, NI being in the news an’ all. A Protestant ( John Byrne ) & A Catholic ( Kevin McAleer ) are sitting in a pub in Northern Ireland. They confess to bigotry in the past, but applaud the [...]

End to IRA military campaign

Well obviously the big news of the day (ok, i’m half an hour late, it’s Friday here) is the IRA statement. It’s been covered everywhere BBC, RTÉ, the Guardian and a dozen others. You’ll get some good analysis and commentary from the blogs: Slugger, Balrog, United Irelander, Most Sincerely Folks … that’ll get you started [...]

Girls? Yuck! Where’s me hurl?

Twenty addresses a serious topic for a change, albeit in his usual humorous way, the issue of morning after pills being made available to girls as young as 11. Yes, twas Tánaiste Mary Harney who suggested this, after she said there was “evidence to show Irish girls in the 11 to 14-year-old age group were [...]

‘out of control’ rip-off culture

At a conference over the weekend Young Fine Gael ripped into the Government for presiding over a rip-off culture[registration cheat] over recent years. And aren’t they right? I hope the message is sent come next election, though don’t we usually continue to vote the greatest gobshites into Government time and time again? I don’t claim [...]

Dingle Dangle

It’s still in the news, the not very exciting Dingle-An Daingean debate. It’s the first story which caught my eye this morning via Back Seat Drivers via Irish Blogs. The latest info is that Kerry County Council have decided yesterday that a poll should be held to see if the west Kerry town’s original placename [...]

De Brún EP speech as Gaeilge

Bairbre de Brún became the first person to address the European Parliment in Irish today following the decision to make Irish a working language. About EU has all the details including the speech text. I didn’t think anyone was allowed to use Irish in the EP just yet, I thought it wasn’t coming in to [...]

New childcare funding package

Now this interets me. Michael McDowell’s expected to announce details of a multi-million Euro package for childcare services thoughout the country. Reports say the funding would be used to encourage groups to set up after school childcare services in school buildings. Thinking about moving back to Ireland one of the biggest concerns for me is [...]