Category: Politics

The State of Exception

As reported, Tracey O’Mahony has undertaken a challenge against the State’s emergency pandemic restrictions. Unfortunately it is the belief of this author that the challenge will be of little consequence. It would seem that the challenge in the High Court...

/ 11/03/2021

Caddle For Editor? —Challenging the UT Clique

For what regards itself to be a journalistic bastion, Trinity College’s University Times (UT) has accrued a rather blemished reputation over the years. From budgetary overspends, to the infamous botched bugging of student accommodation, the paper has shuffled by in...

/ 01/03/2021

The Irish Government’s Public Housing Bonanza for Asylum Seekers

With a foreword written in Albanian, Urdu and Georgian, as well as welcoming introductions by Micheál Martin and Roderic O’Gorman, the long anticipated White Paper laying out the State’s plan to end the Direct Provision system for asylum seekers dropped...

/ 28/02/2021

‘Populist’ TD Alan Kelly Questions the Entry of 2,000 Brazilians

The Labour leader and TD Alan Kelly recently raised some important questions about the entry of 2,000 Brazilian nationals into Ireland over the past month. They arrived in spite of the Irish Government's so-called 'lockdown' policy that has the Irish...

/ 25/02/2021

Nationality: Definition and Formation

“The foundation of Ireland is the Gael, and the Gael must be the element that absorbs. On no other basis can an Irish nation be reared that would not topple over by force of the very ridicule that it would...

/ 15/02/2021

One Nationalism

"There is no other Nationalism than the Nationalism therein implied, i.e. that the nation is more important than any part of the nation." Padraig Pearse January 1914 I cannot say this any more forcefully than this: there are not four...

/ 11/02/2021

Who is Lobbying the State on Hate Speech Legislation?

As of yet uncodified, it appears almost certain that a hate speech bill of some sort will limp its way to the Cabinet table circa Easter time this year. While the Department of Justice has forewarned that it will not...

/ 10/02/2021

What Sort of Nationalist Are You?

Nationalism has made somewhat of a resurgence in the past decade, which was arguably caused by the internet opening up the floodgates to unorthodox opinions—although some may argue it was just a natural backlash against multiculturalism. With a growing number...

/ 09/02/2021

How Pádraig Pearse Imagined Ireland in the Year 2006 (1906)

The following are extracts from a 1906 essay entitled ‘In my Garden’ from the August 4th edition of An Claidheamh Soluis. The full corpus of the magazine archive is freely available and dutifully digitised by means of the Conradh na...

/ 07/02/2021

ROXANNE: Ireland’s New Anti-Hate Speech Surveillance Technology

Marketed as a multiplatform analytical tool to evaluate speech and facial patterns in order to create visual mapping for authorities and identity suspects, ROXANNE is a new breed of surveillance technology in the process of development and currently being backed...

/ 02/02/2021