Léargas

What if I told you that there is a state which has censored and silenced those in its ranks who have criticised its policies and that denies them the right to express their opinion without first submitting their views to a censor to ensure that it conforms to the opinion of the state! You might think China or North Korea or Burma or any one of a number of other states which deny citizens their right to freedom of speech. But you would be wrong. It’s the Vatican state in Rome. In the last two years five prominent theologians and priests in Ireland and the Redemptorist Magazine ‘Reality’ have been officially silenced and censored by the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) in the Vatican. It is believed that there have been others. The most recent example to come to light was that of Fr. Brian D’Arcy, a member of the Passionate Order, who was ‘censured’ for four articles he wrote. Fr. D’Arcy, who is based in the Passionate Monastery in Enniskillen, has been writing f...

This blog has written much in recent time about the Treaty on Stability, Coordination and Governance in the Economic and Monetary Union or for short the Austerity Treaty. As most readers will know there is to be a referendum in the south of Ireland on May 31st. The vote will determine whether this state does or does not sign up for a Treaty which in this blogs view is a bad deal for citizens, for the state and for Europe. The public debate has well and truly begun. Yesterday Sinn Féin launched our analysis of the Treaty and I addressed the Oireachtas sub-committee on the Treaty. The Taoiseach is before the same committee this morning giving the government view. Across Europe also there is growing opposition to the Treaty. I’m told for the first time ever the European Trade Unions Confederation has come out against a European Treaty. The Dutch government has collapsed because of a disagreement over austerity policies. And the Socialist candidate for the French Presidency, Fra...

An Ipsos MRBI opinion poll in the Irish Times last Friday morning captured the media headlines with claims that support for both Fine Gael and Labour has dropped. Fine Gael is down by three points to 33%, and Labour by six points to 19%. Fianna Fáil is down 1% to 14%. According to the poll Sinn Féin is up 6% to 21%. Interestingly the poll was taken at the start of this week immediately after the Labour Party annual conference. Usually parties get a positive bounce after such events. This blog has a jaundiced view of such polls. I’m not going to get over excited by an opinion poll claim that we are the second largest party in the state and the real opposition to the government in the Dáil – the government is after all implementing Fianna Fáil policy. I know we are the real opposition. That is obvious each day in the Dáil chamber. As for the rest, opinion polls are at best a snapshot of public attitudes at a given moment in time. Not too much should be read into their conclusions...

A friend in the USA emailed me a spoof of the Irish Constitution which appears to originate in the Irish Left Review. It purports to show what the Irish constitution will look like if the Austerity Treaty wins the referendum vote on May 31st. It reads: “The Ice Moon has contacts in the highest places and has been able to obtain a secret government memo with a full mockup of the new constitution as amended by the Fiscal Compact Referendum. The following are the relevant new articles: Article 1 The Irish nation hereby abrogates its inalienable, indefeasible, and sovereign right to choose its own form of Government, to determine its relations with other nations, and to develop its life, political, economic and cultural, in accordance with its own genius and traditions and confers these rights on another crowd altogether. Article 5 Ireland is a dependancy of the International Monetary Fund with a lot of really nice pubs. Article 6 All powers of government, legislative, exec...

In a vote in the Dáil on Thursday a Private Members Bill: Medical Treatment (Termination of Pregnancy in Case of Risk to Life of Pregnant Woman) was defeated. The vote came at the end of two days of debate and significant lobbying by all of the many interested groups connected to this issue. The background to this debate is that in 1992 a 14 year old girl became pregnant as a result of rape and was suicidal. The government refused to allow the girl and her parents to travel abroad for an abortion. The case – known as the X-case - went to court and the Supreme Court ruled that ‘a termination of pregnancy is lawful if it can be shown that there is a real and substantial risk to the lift, as distinct from the health, of the mother.’ A subsequent decision in 2010 by the European Court of Human Rights also made it clear that there is an onus on the State to legislate under the terms of the 1937 Constitution and the decision in the X-Case. The Socialist Party TD Clare Daly told the Dái...

I went to a lot of funerals over the Easter break. On Easter Saturday the life of Annie Stone, a stalwart from Ballymurphy and a hero of mine was to be celebrated at a service in Saint John’s Church on the Falls Road. I was at a funeral on Good Friday, as well. Seamus Wilkinson a neighbour of ours and a decent man passed away in his ninety fifth year. I liked Seamus. He was a non pretentious man with a very wide welcoming smile, who loved gardening. Of course there was more to him than that but by the time I met Seamus and his wife Theresa they were in their sixties. These were difficult times in Belfast and I was home even less often than in these more peaceful times. We would bring Seamus and Theresa the occasional pot of soup or some scone bread and apple cake. He was always very generous with biscuits and sweets for the girls. He and I would discuss his colourful- all- year- round garden, dogs, the weather or the fortunes or misfortunes of Antrim's senior teams. So I was sad...

I’m sure it was the last thing Enda Kenny expected to be asked in China but there it was. Having spoken about the role of ‘Ireland in a changing world’ a student in his audience asked about Irish unity and whether the Taoiseach has a ‘time schedule, and what progress have you made, because China is facing the same issues.’ The student was then given a potted Kennyesque history of British colonialism and the last 700 years of Irish history culminating in the Good Friday Agreement. It was just before Easter and Kenny was in China on a trade visit. China too has its sovereignty issues. There is the long standing stand-off between it and Taiwan, and there is the increasingly tragic dispute over Tibetan sovereignty. The shocking image two weeks ago of Jamphel Yeshi, a 27 year old Tibetan exile in India, running burning through the streets of Delhi was carried across many media outlets around the world. Yeshi set himself on fire in protest at the visit of He Jintao the Chinese President, to...

The road from Belfast to Cork used to take forever. The distance is the same as it was 40 years ago but the motorways have transformed the journey. Bill drove Richard and this blog to Bandon in west Cork on Saturday evening in 5 hours - and that was with a break for something to eat. And all within the speed limit. I once drove to Cork on another occasion. I was hungry when we started and along the way I reminded Paddy – who was driving - that it would be nice to stop for something to eat. But Paddy couldn’t quite make up his mind where we should stop and the journey was full of: ‘That looked like a good place’, as we drove passed another pub or cafe. We were in Cork before he eventually stopped. I still think that was his plan from the outset. Saturday night was a fine spring evening. The motorways were mostly clear. When I gently and with some trepidation raised the issue of food there was a quick huddle in the front of the car and within seconds we were off the M7 and stopped at Th...

St. Aidan's Exhibition on Titanic On April 15th it will be one hundred years since the Titanic slipped beneath the waves of the north Atlantic. The story of the Titanic has been told and retold for decades now. The unsinkable ship built in Belfast which sank on its maiden voyage in 1912 with the loss of 1514 lives. Last weekend as I walked through Sainsbury’s supermarket on the Falls Road a special exhibition of cardboard and papier-mâché Titanic’s made by local school children from St. Aidan’s on the Whiterock Road were on show. They were all shapes and sizes. Some of them were three feet long. One had an iceberg and a sinking Titanic beside it. The loss of the Titanic has been the storyline for movies – one of the most successful ever – simply entitled Titanic – is being re-released this week in 3D to mark the centenary of the tragedy and probably make another staggering profit for its makers. This blog remembers the black and white ‘A night to remember’ movie made in 1958. Curre...